Applications for official support – promoting grassroots initiatives

Citizen participation and grassroots initiatives are increasingly important in today’s restructuring societies. Bottom-up proposals often offer various benefits, but resource shortages frequently hold up implementation. However, while there are institutionalized support programs to fight problems coming from the lack of money, information, or human resources, endeavors to mitigate problems ensuing from the lack of hierarchical and relational powers are scarce. Driven by the observation that grassroots initiatives are very often ignored by local decision makers, a new support method to alleviate the dearth of power is proposed in this article. I claim that if recommendation letters from prestigious actors (ministries, scientific panels etc.) were available through applications for grassroots actors, then their valuable initiatives would have better chances to get through. The recognition from a respected body and the publicity of a follow-up report would motivate decision makers to consider the implementation of the initiatives selected for support. Moreover, greater grassroots efficiency and the enhanced transparency of support measures would come at a relatively low cost without any serious practical problems of implementation.