Through “Cali for me”, more than 25 thousand caleños and caleñas joined in a single voice to prioritize a city agenda for Cali to move forward
The purpose of the “Cali for me” initiative is to prioritize, together with the citizens, the projects, programs and initiatives that contribute to the construction of a Territorial Development Agenda for the capital of Valle del Cauca in the medium and long term.
The results of this participatory exercise were shared with male and female pre-candidates for the Mayor’s Office of Cali at the Sociedad de Mejoras Públicas. Between 2022 and 2023, “Cali para mí” has gathered more than 25,000 citizen voices.
Eleven pre-candidates for Mayor of Cali learned about the results of “Cali para mí”, the citizen participation initiative that prioritized projects, programs and initiatives for the construction of a Territorial Development Agenda for the transformation of Cali in the medium and long term.
In its two phases, “Cali for me” gathered the opinion of more than 25,000 citizens. In 2022, 17,800 people prioritized what they considered should be done first for Cali to move forward, among 20 projects related to safety and coexistence, education, mobility, the environment and animal welfare, health, culture, art and heritage, the food system, housing, and public services.
Exercise
In this 2023, “Cali for me” invited citizens to an in-depth exercise so that this time they could say for which components work should be started. In this phase, 8,500 citizens participated.
The results of both exercises were presented to the pre-candidates for Mayor of Cali with the intention that what the people who participated said be included in their agendas and government programs.
The methodology used to reach these priorities was developed through eight work groups with 83 thematic experts suggested by the universities participating in the project, ten citizen workshops with 251 Cali men and women linked to the process, four focus groups, and digital conversation in social networks.
“Citizen participation is essential for any territorial planning exercise. The voice of the people of Cali must be taken into account when defining the destiny of the city, since it is to them that decision makers must answer. What we are doing with ‘Cali for me’ is to allow the agenda for the city to continue advancing, this project belongs to everyone, there are more than 25,000 voices, so what we need is to be able to talk, understand the needs and prioritize”, he stated. María Isabel Ulloa, executive director of ProPacífico.
The presentation of results was attended by the pre-candidates Deninson Mendoza, Miyerlandi Torres, Armando Aristizábal, Alejandro Eder, Diana Rojas, Wilson Ruiz, Juanita Cataño, David Millán; Givier Urbano, Juana Pelaez; in addition to councilor Carlos Andrés Arias.
This great conversation has the support and backing of the Cali Chamber of Commerce, Comfandi, Comfenalco Valle, ProPacífico, the Vallecaucana Action Unit, the Universidad del Valle, the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana de Cali, the Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, the ICESI University and San Buenaventura Cali University; in addition to 20 organizations that promoted it among their audiences.
During the delivery of the results of “Cali for me” the pre-candidates for the Mayor’s Office of Cali got on the “CAM Elevator”, a proposal that they took to all the workshops that were held in the different neighborhoods of the capital of the Valley, in The one in which an exercise was carried out where the citizen was in an elevator to the mayor of Cali and in a minute had the opportunity to say something to him to prioritize the initiatives and projects for the people of Cali.
The elevator
During the day, the pre-candidates got on the “CAM Elevator”, where there is a Ferris wheel that randomly indicated the topic that each one could talk about in one minute.
These are the points raised by the candidates in the “CAM Elevator”.
Juanita Cataño spoke about education:
“Working from early childhood, guaranteeing that all children from zero to five years old can be linked to education, but there is a population that is at great risk, which are children who are in primary school, in high school, at the gates of go out, where in terms of education we must promote it and direct it towards job opportunities”.
Miyerlandi Torres spoke about security:
“Citizen security is focused on four components: doubling the budget to strengthen our armed forces; strengthen technology and intelligence; the entire judicial part; the prison police station with technology and public force optimizing all the police resources we have in a single space with technology. A safety crash plan.
David Millán Orozco spoke about culture:
“In recent years we have been able to open up to new interpretations of culture, which is ultimately all that human beings do in society, and a fundamental element of what we call the production process of a better society, is to work permanently in the relationship and in the production of all that in society are cultural manifestations”.
Diana Rojas spoke about mobility:
“Carry out an urgent system recovery process, that goes through a liquidation process of a first administration in which we are going to have a public operator; understand mobility from dignity; advance in multimodal transport, have a collective public transport in the east of our city, bicycle system; the recomposition of our road network; the civic culture”.
Juana Peláez spoke about mobility:
“We have to solve the problem of the MIO, an effectively multimodal transport but it is necessary to be able to articulate the bicycles, they need to be in the imagination of the people. There is a matter of track maintenance that needs to be resolved. But we must also think about the mobility of the entire east, the hillside and the rural area”.
Givier Urbano, spoke about the environment
“The bet that we make from the environment is renewable energy, we are going to reduce CO2 and for that renewable energy is essential, we are going to promote electric vehicles, electricity in homes, electrical communities are going to multiply, work a lot in deforestation, the decontamination of rivers, a city that once again includes nature”.
Wilson Ruiz spoke about mobility:
“Cali must have an efficient MIO transport, they are wrongly charging per kilometer, I believe that you have to charge per user. Second, if I have to back out of a MIO contract, I’m not going to back out, but MIO transport has to be efficient, have very good security, and of course be economical”.
Alejandro Eder spoke about health:
“In health it is time to unify the information system so that a more timely service can be provided, we need to improve quality above all, we have a lot of coverage but there has to be more effectiveness, ambulances have to be controlled. They are technical issues that any of the pre-candidates who are here can have if we get good advice ”.
Armando Aristizábal spoke about the environment:
“I have a recycling industry and the amount of materials and surpluses that the city is producing are not being fully used or optimized. Additionally, MIO is becoming a contamination factor. Cali cannot continue looking at the Farallones de Cali from behind, that is the lung we have”.
Carlos Arias spoke about education:
“Children in educational institutions must be protected from the scourge of micro-trafficking, the PAE must be strengthened, the world today needs bilinguals and programmers. On the subject of the District University, we do not need a large construction but to use about three educational institutions in eastern Cali and two on the hillside, make large agreements.
See here the interventions of the pre-candidates in the CAM elevator: