Councilor Águeda Cedrés and the team from the Citizen Participation area of Yaiza presented on Tuesday afternoon to a dozen associations of the municipality, as well as residents who attended in a personal capacity, the new features implemented by the new website launched by said department. In addition to detailing the importance of creating the first 'Municipal Census of Citizen Entities', a tool that aims to maintain an updated database of active associations in the municipality, with which to resume more direct and continuous contact by reactivating the 'Active Citizenship' program, developed with great success in the municipality prior to the pandemic and which managed to unite residents and citizen entities to work together achieving "significant progress".
The meeting held at the Camel Interpretation Center of Uga was only the first of those planned by the Department of Citizen Participation, which plans to visit the various towns of the municipality in the coming months with the aim of "reaching all residents, associations and groups" of Yaiza.
"Since the pandemic, the landscape of associations in the municipality has changed a lot, with some that have already disappeared or have been inactive for some time, boards of directors that have been replaced, or citizen entities of recent creation," Cedrés clarified at the beginning of the meeting, "so the first step is to know which ones are still running and which are not, to know the associations of recent creation and to resume contact among all. The goal is to always have an updated database of the organizations that work in and for the municipality of Yaiza and subsequently reactivate the 'Active Citizenship' program with them."
In fact, in this first informative meeting in which the AMPA of CEIP Yaiza, 'Perpetuarte', 'Los Timanfeiros', 'Asociación Creciendo' or 'Doggys del Sur' were represented, three new associations active in the municipality were already announced, such as 'Oasis de luz', 'Un nuevo recurso' and the 'Club Deportivo Creciendo'.
New website
After the presentation of all of them, in which each one explained their reason for being and objectives, the technician Vanesa Fontes took a tour of the different sections of the new digital platform detailing the main novelties that it includes to facilitate the participation of associations and residents in votes, consultations or when proposing initiatives. In it, you can also consult the projects that are underway and those carried out in previous years, both at an institutional level and jointly with associations and residents, through the 'Active Citizenship' program, such as the creation of the first participatory budgets, the approval of the citizen participation regulation, which precisely included the need to create this municipal census, or the 'Yaiza virtual' section, to provide coverage for streaming or later viewing of workshops, debates, talks or training sessions that they promote.
In addition, it also exposed another of the main missions of the website and that is none other than to "serve as a showcase" to all active associations in the municipality so that residents can know their existence, the work they do and contact directly with their managers, since although some have their own website or social networks, others do not have the time or resources necessary, and in this way citizens are facilitated the "access" to all of them from the same platform.
On the other hand, regarding the creation of the first Municipal Census, the objective is primarily to update the information of the active associations in the municipality and their contact information, trying to keep it always up to date, and take steps to recover the "social cohesion" achieved among the different groups and residents of the municipality through the 'Active Citizenship' program to, subsequently, resume the realization of joint initiatives. "Knowing who we are and who we are in the first place," Fontes clarified, "to create the census and from there to generate the social cohesion that we had achieved with this program because we were a large and very strong team, with many desire to do things and that gave wonderful fruits."
For her part, Águeda Cedrés, assured that "recovering what was diluted with the pandemic is now our main mission to build a Yaiza together, because we already demonstrated with the participatory budgets and other initiatives that co-governance is possible and we must recover that."
In this sense, the mayor of Yaiza, Óscar Noda, explains that "it is our duty not only to recognize and appreciate the invaluable work carried out by all these groups and associations in the municipality, but also to extend a hand to them from the institutions and put at their disposal the necessary tools so that they can develop their activity, as well as offer them spaces for dialogue in which to create, among all, joint projects that benefit the residents of Yaiza as we already did with the 'Participatory Budgets' among other initiatives."
Entities interested in registering in the municipal census can contact the Department of Citizen Participation through the mailbox available on the website filling out the form, sending an email to rubicon@ayuntamientodeyaiza.es or calling 928 83 03 16.