Circles of Inspiration: Women Who Activate Conversations with their Local Governments focuses on a specific public problem: the absence of spaces for meeting, dialogue, and collaboration between women community leaders and local government officials in Cundinamarca, Colombia.
Although women play a central role in sustaining social life in their territories, the relationship between citizens and local authorities is often marked by distance and mistrust. Opportunities to exchange experiences, share data, and jointly prioritize challenges are scarce.
This undermines democratic quality along two dimensions at once: responsiveness, because institutions struggle to respond to problems identified by women in their communities; and political inclusion, because rural women’s knowledge and leadership rarely translate into sustained influence over local agendas.
The experiment was designed to address this gap by testing under what conditions structured interaction between women rural leaders and women officials can generate new forms of collaboration, trust, and collective action. It builds on the existing Vecinas Valiosas project in Cundinamarca and will engage 131 women in 47 municipalities, combining social leaders and local government officials. Rather than treating responsiveness as a problem of “demand” (citizens) or “supply” (the state) alone, the experiment assumes that it is a relational property that emerges from how these actors interact.
The matching process is therefore not a rigid one-to-one pairing but the formation of 55 working teams that bring together different perspectives and roles. The aim is to activate conversations in which participants reflect on shared challenges, exchange strategies, and begin to shape joint responses to local problems.
The architecture of the experiment unfolds in three phases that connect different participation formats. A first phase of inspiration and connection convenes women through virtual sessions that establish a baseline of experiences and challenges in their interactions with local governments. In a second phase, “activation” happens through guided conversations in WhatsApp groups, access to an e-learning platform (Hacku) with microcontent on citizen engagement and project design, and the creation of self-managed local circles in which women deepen dialogue and begin to identify priority challenges. A third phase focuses on identifying these challenges more clearly, providing small resources to support local collaboration, and systematizing results. Across these phases, the emphasis shifts from individual experience to collective learning and from diffused dissatisfaction to shared, concrete agendas.
The experiment has clearly defined expected results: at least 15 local problems should be prioritized by the end of the three-month pilot. It will generate a qualitative and quantitative database on women’s experiences with local governments, a “living map” of collaborations, and documented stories that make visible the power of women’s networks in local public management.
Indicators include participation records on the platform and in WhatsApp groups, micro-surveys on emerging topics and mutual learning, reports on local actions or improvements, and follow-up on new groups formed after the pilot. Perceived changes in government responsiveness will be measured through online surveys and short interviews.
The team behind the experiment brings together organizations rooted across the region, contributing complementary strengths: Socialab (Colombia) steers the overall process and anchors it in Cundinamarca through the Vecinas Valiosas network; Huella Local (Chile), Laboratorio de Gobierno (Chile), Red de Innovación Local (Argentina), and VelezReyes+ (Latin America) add experience in local government innovation, peer-learning methodologies, and territorial partnerships.
The resulting collaboration should create an enabling environment in which women can appropriate the methodology, adapt it to their realities, and continue the circles beyond the pilot. If the experiment succeeds, it will provide a scalable model for strengthening responsiveness and political inclusion by transforming the relationship between women and local governments into a space of ongoing dialogue, shared learning, and joint action.
