Child and Parent Friendly Municipality Governance Guide

Municipalities are the closest public institutions to the citizens, which can contribute to the quality of life of the citizens, produce solutions to the problems, difficulties and obstacles they encounter in daily life. It is undeniable that municipalities touch the lives of families, which is considered as the smallest unit of society, and contribute to the development of parents and children. With the Child and Parent Friendly Municipality Governance Guide Project, we aim to contribute to the structural strengthening of the contribution that municipalities can offer to parents and children, to create improvement proposals in terms of policies and practices, and to support the implementation of improving application proposals by putting forward the public-civil society-private sector cooperation.

While creating the governance scorecard of the municipalities by giving priority to improve quality of life of children, 'Municipal Governance Scorecard^©' model is found adequate as a research model. The Municipality Governance Scorecard Model is a model that focuses on data-based and continuous learning, and accelerates development by sharing good examples that belong to municipalities. While this model evaluates on publicly available data of municipalities (Eg. strategic plan, annual report, etc.), it also helps us to share the obtained results thanks to open data that the municipalities present on their official websites. Likewise it has various applications such as: Municipal Governance Scorecard of Istanbul Districts, The Inclusive Municipal Governance Scorecard, which examines the municipalities in terms of being women-friendly by collaborating with different NGOs, and The Green Municipality Scorecard, which evaluates the municipalities in terms of green friendliness.

The project, in which we evaluate municipalities in terms of being parent and child friendly, and which we aim to develop policy recommendations, has a quality that will set an example for many NGOs in terms of our cooperation, structure and inclusiveness. Starting from supporting the development of parents and children in early childhood, we expand our research on the basis of both different social groups and different age groups, by involving private sector volunteers in the process, with a cooperation model that covers all periods of child development.

Child and Parent Friendly Municipality Governance Guide Project consists of three phases in total. In the first phase, needs and expectations of the municipalities are listed and reported, in the second phase, the current situation and the evaluation model of the municipalities are executed and policy, development and implementation proposals are determined, and finally, in the third phase, different applications for development proposals are put into practice and the created effect is measured. Each phase can be considered separately from a holistic approach:

In the first phase;

• Determining the project structure, collaborations and actions,
• Preparing and implementing the online survey which is sent to the municipalities,
• Realization of the project launch event,
• Reporting the survey sent to the municipalities,

In the second phase;

• Establishing the evaluation model (criteria),
• Evaluation of research criteria through pilot municipalities,
• Completion and reporting of the research,

In the third phase;

• Supporting, measuring and evaluating the development areas by implementing the policy recommendations among pilot municipalities,
• Measurable presentation of the proposed development proposals with different applications,
• Sharing policy recommendations with the impact of implementation results,
• As the closing event of the project, it is aimed to organize a 'Children's Festival'

We aim to reach to the following outcomes at the end of the project;

• To reveal the current situation regarding the contribution of municipalities to the development of children with the “Child Friendly Municipality Governance Guide”,
• To present policy and development recommendations to municipalities in order to strengthen their contributions to the development of children,
• To trigger development by encouraging good examples from Turkey and the world,
• To offer application suggestions from civil society and private sector
• To measure the impact created by the implementation proposals by creating and sharing a 'child and parent friendly municipality development package'
• To initiate the establishment of a research and application center for a 'Child and Parent Friendly' city.