I am Josh Rosenstein and I am a second year UNC-Chapel Hill MPA student getting ready to graduate from the School of Government. I usually blog over at MPA Matters, but it is a real pleasure to get to write a guest post over here about I topic I love and care about: community engagement.
I get to tell you about puppets, Frederick Douglass and community fun and learning.
We’re glad to offer some reflections here on the workshop Working with Citizen Advisory Committees and Boards we hosted at the School of Government on May 5th. The workshop consisted of a group of 28 very engaged participants from across North Carolina. These folks were a wonderful, diverse group: elected officials, city and county clerks, program managers, a council of government official, NC Cooperative Extension advisor and appointed members of citizen advisory committees or boards (we’ll use CABs here, for short). In other words, we had, in the room together, virtually all aspects of local government CABs: participants, staff support, and elected officials that create the CABs and seek to utilize their input. Continue Reading
How can academic research translate into action-based, results-oriented solutions to issues central to local community development and public engagement? When it comes to policy making, the voting public should be able to actively engage informed experts within the academy to help them participate in and shape policies that matter to them. Citizens could more effectively engage local government if academic research were more accessible so that a more educated citizenry could then apply the research to problems in their respective communities. For example, Citizen Advisory Committees (CACs) meetings are great forums where academics can connect with concerned citizens and offer insight on matters where data collected from studies conducted in other regions may offer guidance on local community relations or conflict resolution among grassroots organizations and local government. Oftentimes, the will to improve conditions exceeds the know-how of pragmatic solutions to lingering issues that encumber communities and pass from generation to generation.
Partnerships between the public and the academy based not only on the dissemination of information but on actual conversations with stakeholders form mentoring relationships so that citizens utilize practical knowledge to formulate immediate and long-term solutions. Continue Reading
Citizens academies are educational programs conducted by cities and counties aiming to create better informed and engaged citizens. These programs involve ordinary citizens participating in several (usually between six and twelve) sessions taught by local government officials on the wide range of local government services and operations. Programs are usually taught to cohorts of 20-25 residents and end with a graduation. Participants not only learn about their local government, but also learn about how they can be directly involved in it by, for example, serving on citizen advisory boards or committees. Continue Reading