Community Engagement Learning Exchange

Highlights from Community Engagement Matters (Now More Than Ever)

This entry was contributed by Cate Elander, on March 15th, 2016 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Civic Education, Community Partnerships, Innovation, Outreach Methods.

Stanford Center for Social Innovation just released an article titled Community Engagement Matters (Now More Than Ever), co-authored by Melody Barnes of the Aspen Forum for Community Solutions and Results for America and Paul Schmitz of the Collective Impact Forum. The article is concise and powerful, and it calls for pairing evidence-based programs and data with genuine community engagement and context for best results toward sustainability of community-level change. Without both approaches, top-down efforts will ultimately fail to create lasting change. Specifically, the article states:

“To achieve positive and enduring change, public and nonprofit leaders must create community engagement strategies that are as robust as the data-driven solutions that they hope to peruse.” Continue Reading

Fayetteville moves to renovate parks and recreation centers: But is it enough to attract new business?

This entry was contributed by Michelle Bir, on March 9th, 2016 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Community Partnerships, Innovation.

On March 15th the city of Fayetteville votes on the Parks and Recreation Bond Referendum. The referendum is for a 35 million dollar bond and intended to improve the city’s infrastructure by renovating recreation facilities across the city. Continue Reading

Financial Transparency is Essential, but not the Entire Solution

This entry was contributed by Kevin Amirehsani, on March 4th, 2016 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Innovation, Online Participation.

As we’re constantly told, this is The Age of Big Data, and tapping into that monstrous yet murky term indeed has the potential to revolutionize the way organizations function, particularly when it comes to finances. Local government and other public entities are no exception.

Indeed, many are increasingly publishing reams of financial data, like procurement contracts, salaries, and details of their various budgets. Some of this is still done in old-fashioned ways – many of us know how frustrating it is to mine data from PDFs of scanned documents, for instance. Yet even when Big Data is made available by governments in a standard format, with accompanying APIs for coders to freely draw from, and with aesthetically pleasing visualizations, is that enough? Continue Reading

Growing CATS by Engaging the Community

This entry was contributed by Traci Ethridge, on February 26th, 2016 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Community Partnerships, Outreach Methods.

By Krystel Green

Have you ever met a fascinating person who engages you with probing questions, thoughtful commentary and interesting facts? The two of you then embark on a lively conversation where you might gain or give a different perspective and learn something new. When parting ways, you’ve probably said, “Let’s keep in touch” and exchanged contact information. This is the dynamic that the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) looks to create with the public. Continue Reading

Civic Engagement for Non-College Youth

This entry was contributed by Katy Harriger, on February 19th, 2016 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Civic Education, Community Partnerships, Dialogue & Deliberation, Elected Officials, Innovation.

The presidential primary season has drawn considerable attention to the issue of young voters and what appears to be their overwhelming support for Bernie Sanders. On my campus students are engaging in debate watch parties, are organizing voter registration drives, and a small group of around twenty students, both Republican and Democratic, are having the experience of a lifetime in a program called Wake the Vote, which has taken them already to Iowa and New Hampshire and later in the year will give them the opportunity to attend the conventions. These kinds of experiences translate into participation at the polls. An organization that studies the political participation of young people (CIRCLE) reports that 70% of the youth votes (18-24) cast were cast by young people with at least some college experience. Clearly, activities that provide students with the opportunity to get engaged in the political process are powerful motivators for voting.

The Last Mile: Building Better Access in North Carolina to Enhance Civic Participation

This entry was contributed by Emily Edmonds, on February 11th, 2016 at 11:46 am and is filed under Capacity Building, Online Participation, Outreach Methods.

In December, my colleague here at CELE, Brian Bowman, wrote an excellent piece about how technology can help make government more transparent and accessible. With data from the Pew Research Center, he then explored how often citizens are able to access government information on the Internet – and the many underserved groups who don’t yet receive the full benefits of technology (including older people, non-English speakers, and colorblind individuals).

The Power of Empowerment

This entry was contributed by Jennifer Trotter, on February 5th, 2016 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Community Partnerships, Diversity, Outreach Methods, Public Meetings, Uncategorized.

The International Association for Public Participation (IAP2), an international federation of public participation practitioners including a USA affiliate, has developed a spectrum of community engagement techniques. The spectrum ranges from “informing” to “empowering” the public.

These are wonky practitioner words; however, they actually mean a world of difference. Informing is focused on one-way communication, whereas empowering is literally giving the power of decision-making to the public.

I’ll describe a project on community empowerment, and some key lessons. First, I’ll address why empowerment is scary, often promised but not fulfilled in particular cases, and basic guiding principles for overcoming the challenges of community empowerment projects. Continue Reading

Housing First Models vs. Transitional Housing Progressions

This entry was contributed by Michelle Bir, on January 28th, 2016 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Community Partnerships, Housing, Outreach Methods.

In the traditional system, homeless individuals are moved through levels of housing that will eventually lead to independent housing. For instance, from the streets to the shelters, and from the shelters to a housing program, and from a housing program to an independent apartment. In the housing program, treatment is given to battle some factors surrounding homelessness like, substance abuse, mental health, job training, and domestic violence.

Beautiful Budgets: Opportunities and Gaps in Online Local Budget Engagement

This entry was contributed by Eric Jackson, on January 21st, 2016 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Civic Education, Dialogue & Deliberation, Innovation.

Over the last few years, there has been a mini-explosion of websites that use visualization and interactivity to make government budgets easier to understand and navigate. In North Carolina, 2015 saw sites go live for Asheville, Raleigh, Cary and Buncombe County. Across the country, efforts have ranged from volunteer-led open source projects like Open Budget: Oakland to government-led efforts built on commercial platforms, like Chattanooga’s Open Budget App or Ohio’s Open Checkbook. Cloud services for open budgets have been launched by commercial ventures like OpenGov and Balancing Act, and by my own non-profit organization, DemocracyApps, which developed the CommunityBudgets.org platform that hosts the Asheville, Cary and Buncombe County sites. There has also been significant legislative activity, including the Data Act at the federal level and a new North Carolina requirement (section 7.17) that local governments publish budget and spending data to a central state transparency website.

All these initiatives are very much to be celebrated. They are the leading edge of a powerful and growing trend toward greater openness in local government and promise better citizen access to the critical financial information and decision-making that underlie nearly everything city and county governments do. However, it’s important to ask just where we’re going and how we’ll know that we’ve arrived. How do we ensure that open budget efforts actually improve community engagement and outcomes over other means for learning citizens’ priorities?

Let’s begin by examining just what a public budget is and what makes it good or bad.

The Power of Small

This entry was contributed by Melody Warnick, on January 6th, 2016 at 9:00 am and is filed under Capacity Building, Community Partnerships, Uncategorized.

The highway overpass that funnels vacationers like me toward the high-end shops and million-dollar mansions of downtown Charleston, South Carolina, soars a hundred feet above a very different kind of neighborhood, a part of the city known as the Upper Peninsula. The homes here are small, interspersed among warehouses and union halls, and lived in primarily by low-income, African-American Charlestonians. With three thousand residents spread across 800 acres, the streets have a worn, slightly abandoned feel.

This is a part of Charleston that’s expected to change dramatically in the next five or ten years. As people and businesses are crowded or priced out of other parts of Charleston, the Upper Peninsula will, it’s hoped, get the spillover. Already new restaurants are being built and businesses are moving in. It’s the city’s wild frontier, and as Rachel Parris, director of development and community relations for the placemaking nonprofit Enough Pie (because they believe “there’s enough pie to go around” for everyone in Charleston), explains, “Right now we’re looking to mold that growth and shape it in a way that’s really inclusive. That’s where creative placemaking and community engagement come in.”