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Case Study #1
Bo, Sierra Leone - Step 1

Step 1 Key Output

A City Growth Charter

The Key Output of Step 1 is to develop a Charter for your growing city. The Step is broken down into three parts to achieve this: A) Preparing for the Charter Workshop, B) The Charter Workshop, and C) Consulting Publicly on the Charter. Bo City Council undertook all of these activities extremely successfully.

Bo City Council felt they learnt three key lessons from Step 1:

1) The importance of using an integrated approach

2) The importance of strengthening public participation and creating space for
key stakeholders to be involved in all stages of planning and implementation

3) Ensuring the council anticipates instead of reacts to problems

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Step 1 Activities
Activity A

Preparing for the Charter Workshop

During this preparatory step, a small team from Bo City Council, along with the in-country technical support Catriona Forbes, worked through the necessary steps to prepare for the Charter Workshop. The team calculated the future urban population growth projections and the amount of land needed to accommodate that growth. This was documented in a PPT to be shared during the Charter Workshop.The team also identified key stakeholders, engaged with them and invited them to the Charter Workshop.

Activity B

Workshop: The Charter

The Workshop was attended by over 50 people representing a variety of stakeholders; Bo City Council, Bo District Council, Civil Society, Paramount Chiefs and Landowning Families to name a few. The day was split into two parts; morning presentations and discussion in a lecture style format, with a more interactive afternoon session developing the draft City Growth Charter in smaller groups with flipcharts and pens. A representative from each group presented the groups' ideas at the end of the day, and these were compiled to create the first draft of the City Growth Charter.

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Activity C

Consulting Publicly on the Charter

Using the draft Charter, the Bo City Council team undertook outreach sessions with the community to share the content and intentions of the Charter, this included radio broadcasts and interacting with citizens across the city.

More informal methods of community outreach were undertaken as not all residents have access to formal channels for information dissemination and feedback. Evidence of this engagement is depicted in the accompanying images.

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