Citizens engagement is proposed as a way to improve development projects in local communities. By involving community members in project planning, budgeting, and oversight, residents will feel ownership over the projects and be more likely to maintain them. The key stakeholders - local government, NGOs, community leaders, and residents - must all be brought together from the start. Crowdsourcing ideas and allowing local contributions of funds, labor, and materials can further foster community investment. Ensuring opinion leaders feel their input is valued can help overcome past distrust and encourage participation. The success of citizens engagement initiatives will be measured by community maintenance of projects long after completion and developing a true sense of ownership.

1. CITIZENS ENGAGEMENT, A GAME CHANGER FOR DEVELOPMENT?
Many projects executed by either government or an NGO loses its value and finally becomes
a white elephant. This has been due to not engaging the local community and poor
maintenance culture. What I want to achieve is to instill the “sense of ownership” in
communities where developmental projects are done. In Ghana, school structures are built
by governments and other NGOs; due to that this initiative must be led by both the local
government authority and NGOs in the education sector. When citizens feels part of the
process that leads to the locating of school buildings, budgeting, supervision, etc, they change
their attitude that makes them unconcern and for that matter are reluctant to maintain/take
care of any governments/community/NGO projects meant for the community. It will make
them more conscious since they feel part of the whole process.
The key players of these initiative will be the officials of the local government authority,
NGOs in the education sector, the local officials of the education ministry and community
opinion leaders. Participants for this initiative will be drawn from the education specialist
from the NGOs, local government authority (financing authority), education ministry,
opinion leaders and members of the community where the projects will take place. If the
initiative fails to bring all stakeholders together especially the community members the
school structures may be erected but might not achieve the purpose for which it was built.
The closed model decision making where the officials executing the project believes and
thinks they are more knowledgeable and have expertise than the rural folds who will benefits
from their expertise for that matter there is no need to consult them and ask for their opinion
even when the communities have requested for it will change for the best. I believe this has
been the practice for so many years and the official’s feels they are obliged to continue the
tradition and hence ignoring to listen to the elders of the village even when they have
requested to meet with officials.
Crowdsourcing will be the best toolkit to use here. The most important thing to do here is to
identify a problem, where in our case will be the lack of school structure in the community.
Engaging citizens to bring their ideas and opinions in getting a solution will help instill a

2. sense of ownership in them resulting in taking good care of the projects when handed to them
finally. The next thing to think about here will be crowd funding, local communities can
contribute their quota to the building of the school through labor, funds and other minor
activities which might make feel part of the projects.
One of the challenges these initiative might face is the boycotting of the activity since opinion
leaders ideas and voices are often neglected and have been neglected in the past. Decisions
on projects of such nature are often taking in board rooms without consulting them and has
turned out to be a waste of resources. First of all, it is important to convince the opinion
leaders of the community that their ideas and opinions will be highly appreciated and trying
to find a common ground to implement what all stakeholders decides. Failure to do so will
deepened their mistrust in both the local government authority and the NGO in question.
A way of evaluating the success of this initiative is to make sure leaders of the projects
implements what has been agreed on; this is the point of departure. The response from the
opinion leaders should be considered as a breakthrough since they will be able to persuade
their people to be part of the projects. Finally, the involvement of the local citizens will
deemed as the greatest. The success of the projects will be measured through the maintenance
culture on the part of the citizenry years after the commissioning. The sense of ownership as
a result of been part of the process will go a long way to change the situation where millions
of dollars go waste every year due to the closed decision making attitude of many
government/NGO official .