Ordinary citizens often feel removed from the world of think tanks, not always fully understanding the work and research they do. This can lead to a lack of engagement by citizens in both the research and policy process, and lead to a lack of basic knowledge with regards pressing policy issues. The think tank I work for in Amenia, Advanced Social Technologies (AST), has sought to use mechanisms such as Town Hall Meetings to involve ordinary citizens in our work, and to solicit input and feedback on various topics. The presentation and video below describe our experiences and learning from these meetings. These meetings were conducted by in June 2012 in Armavir, Armenia. One of the meetings discussed policy alternatives for improving access of rural women to antenatal health services, while the other focused on policy options to improve the efficiency of public spending on drinking water. Each meeting accommodated 50 participants and examined different policy options, providing a wide array of different policy ideas that we could feed into our work - proving very valuable indeed!

1. Town Hall Meetings as a tool to
effectively engage citizens in the
work of think tanks and get citizens
excited and involved in the
budgetary process

2. What are Town Hall Meetings (THMs)?
• A facilitated discussion among the general public, where
hundreds of people get together and voice their specific
concerns or suggestions on predesigned policy options to
address the same policy issue.
• An effective way for
policy makers and
policy researchers to
get feedback from final
beneficiaries AND
engage them in the
process of policy
design.

3. What do you need to set up a THM? –
the participants
• First, decide who your participants are going
to be. Does the policy concern everyone, or
a particular group of people?
• Once you’ve narrowed down your target
group, find effective ways to invite
participants to the meeting. These will be
context-specific, and can range from
personal invitations to leaflets handed out
in the streets to media announcements

4. What do you need to set up a THM? –
the logistics
• A large room with tables that seat
10-12 participants
• A facilitator and a note taker for
each table
•
A laptop computer for
each table connected
via LAN to the main
server
•
A simple software that
allows notes taken at
each table to feed into
the server and be
projected on a big
screen in live fashion

5. What do you need to set up a THM? –
the content
Just two things:
• A general-publicfriendly summary of
the policy issue
• A general-publicfriendly summary of 35 policy alternatives to
address the policy issue
and what the expected
outcomes of the
alternative would be

6. What do you need to set up a THM? –
the human resources
• Researcher capable of presenting the policy issue in a
general-public-friendly manner
• Facilitators who are well aware
of the topic, but are capable of
keeping their own opinions to
themselves
• Note takers who are capable of
shaping the often incoherent
thoughts into meaningful
sentences and not missing any
ideas in the process

7. How do THMs work? – Stage 1.
Brainstorming
Researcher presents
the policy issue
Facilitators either
pass around or read
out one of the
proposed policy
alternatives
Participants give
feedback to that
particular policy
alternative – both
positive and
negative!
They then pass to the
next policy
alternative
NOTE: You don’t compare alternatives at this stage!

8. How do THMs work? – Stage 2. Voting
• After all policy alternatives have
been discussed, every participant
votes for the best policy option.
• The results are logged in by the
note taker and appear on the large
screen

9. THMs - the many great outcomes
• We now know how
our policy
alternatives
resonate with the
public and which of
the alternatives is
most likely to be
well-received by the
beneficiaries.
You can’t lose!
If our policy choice as
researchers magically
coincides with the public
“vote”, we have a great
leverage in our
discussions with policy
makers!
If the option we were
sure was absolutely best
is voted worst, we know
why and we can try to
make it better!

10. Most importantly…
A) The citizens start understanding what we are
doing
B) They feel part of what we’re doing
C) And ultimately
feel their voice may
actually influence
policy decisions

11. A fair warning
• Let’s say the goal of your THM is to get feedback
on a very specific budget decision within a small
community and you’ve got the Community
Leader on board who’s willing to go either way
depending on the vote. In such a case, go ahead
and tell the participants that their input will
directly transfer into policy action.
• In all other cases (99.9%), DO NOT make
promises, or you risk ruining the A, B, C.