evoice: the challenge of future democracy in Europe
evoice intends to enhance the interest and the engagement of European citizens in general political issues within a representative democracy.
Building on the existing civilian interest in single issue politics, evoice aims to increase public influence and interactive citizens' participation in political decision-making by means of the multi media dialogue approach.
The evoice project will develop the multi media dialogue approach, inventory and select the best tools, train the participants, apply the multi media dialogue approach in pilots, evaluate the whole process, organise local democracy days, disseminate the results and publish a user manual.
evoice assumes that local and regional authorities are the appropriate organisations to work with and reach the evoice aims because of their direct links to the citizens.
The evoice project is financed through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the framework of the Interreg IIIB North Sea Programme and contributions from the project partners.
'All the world expects greater pushes for democracy by the means of the internet. My opinion is like Radio Eriwan: in principle yes. But it depends if you do more than open a website. evoice does more, because of its multi-channel attempt. Especially is it necessary that you let people involve where they are, where they live, f.e. by operating in so called underprivileged city areas and by contacting special target groups. Internet is nothing if you don't know the address and how to manage to join it. And you have to combine the advantages of the different medias as radio, tv, flyers, posters and last but not least of the local newspapers.'Mr Hans-Christoph Hoppensack, Bürgerstiftung Bremen (FRG)
