MetroQuest Hosts Online Engagement Webinar, 6/14

Posted on June 13, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We encourage NCDDers tpo participate in an educational webinar on a case study of successful online engagement from British Columbia tomorrow, June 14th at 1pm that will be hosted by Metroquest, an NCDD organizational member. We originally heard about the webinar in the post below from the Davenport Institute and their Gov 2.0 Watch blog. You can read the post below, find the original post here, or go ahead and register for the webinar here.

Webinar: Online Engagement

Head’s up for a webinar offered by MetroQuest looking at how the city of Abbotsford, BC has implemented a successful online engagement called Abbotsfwd.

When: Tuesday, June 14, 2016
1:00-1:45 pm ET, 10:00- 10:45 am PT

Registration is required, but free of charge. You can register here.

More from the Metroquest description of the webinar:

This highly visual 45-minute webinar will present research findings and proven best practices, practical tips and award-winning case studies to guide agencies towards the successful application of online community engagement for planning projects. Participants will walk away with an understanding about how to leverage digital engagement to achieve unprecedented results using cost-effective tools. This session will feature our special guests Abbotsforward who will be online to talk about the innovative ways they combined online and targeted face to face community engagement to involve over 8,000 community members in the creation of an official plan for Abbotsford, BC. They will also share advice for agencies seeking to improve the breadth and effectiveness of their community engagement efforts and talk about the positive difference that broad community support is making in their implementation process.

You can find the original version of this Gov 2.0 Watch blog post at http://gov20watch.pepperdine.edu/2016/06/webinar-online-engagement.

15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting: A Toolkit for Evaluators and Implementers

Posted on June 2, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 29-page toolkit, 15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting: A Toolkit for Evaluators and Implementers, was created in collaboration with Public Agenda (PA), the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), and the North American Research Board. The toolkit includes 15 metrics to capture major elements of a PB process, to support the evaluation of a specific PB site and use the data to inform the larger PB movement.

Below is an excerpt from the toolkit, which you can find in full PDF, both in English and in Spanish on Public Agenda’s site here.

From Public Agenda…

Evaluation is a critical component of any PB effort. Systematic and formal evaluation can help people who introduce, implement, participate in or otherwise have a stake in PB understand how participatory budgeting is growing, what its reach is, and how it’s impacting the community and beyond.

We developed the 15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting toolkit for people interested in evaluating PB efforts in their communities. It is meant to encourage and support some common research goals across PB sites and meaningfully inform local and national discussions about PB in the U.S. and Canada. It is the first iteration of such a toolkit and especially focused on providing practical and realistic guidance for the evaluation of new and relatively new PB processes.

Anyone involved in public engagement or participation efforts other than participatory budgeting may also be interested in reviewing the toolkit for research and evaluation ideas.

To develop the 15 PB metrics, the North American Research Board, Public Agenda (PA) and the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) drew on previous evaluations of PB in the U.S. and around the world, the academic literature on PB as a democratic innovation and the experience of local evaluators in the U.S. and Canada. To create the research instruments, Public Agenda and PBP adapted surveys originally developed and used by local evaluators in various PB sites across North America.

The toolkit includes:
-15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting: 15 indicators (“metrics”) that capture important elements of each community-based PB process and the PB movement in North America overall
-Key PB Metrics Research Instruments: A set of Research Instruments (all customizable) to support local evaluation and facilitate the collection of data that address the key PB metrics: Idea Collection Participant Survey Template, Voter Survey Template, and Questionnaire for Evaluators and Implementers
-Introduction to the Instruments and Evaluation Timeline: An introduction to the above instruments, which also includes a timeline for how evaluation can fit into PB roll-out

15 Key Metrics for Evaluating Participatory Budgeting

Measuring PB’s Impact on Civic and Political Life:

To what extent does PB engage a significant and growing number of residents, including those who cannot or do not participate in mainstream political life?

1. Number of PB participants and percentage of eligible residents who participate. Indicates PB’s reach and ability to engage the targeted population.
2. Number and percentage of PB voters who are eligible to vote but did not vote in the most recent local election. Indicates PB’s potential to engage residents who don’t participate in the mainstream political process.
3. Number and percentage of PB voters who are ineligible to vote in local elections. Indicates PB’s potential to engage people who are excluded from standard forms of political participation owing to age, immigration status or other reasons.
4. Number and percentage of participants who report prior civic engagement or participation. Indicates PB’s potential to attract otherwise less civically engaged residents.
5. Number and percentage of participants who report being new or returning to PB. Indicates both growth and retention of PB participants and various patterns of participation over time.

To what extent does PB foster collaboration between civil society organizations and government?

6. Number of nongovernmental and community-based organizations involved in PB. Indicates the extent to which PB engages civil society. Also an indicator of variation in how processes are implemented.

Is PB associated with elected officials’ political careers?

7. Number and percentage of elected officials re-elected. Helps to assess over time PB’s association with officials’ political careers.

Impact on Inclusion and Equity:

Is PB engaging traditionally marginalized communities?

8. Number and percentage of participants who are of low socioeconomic status (SES) and/or people of color; and relative to demographics in the jurisdiction and in the most recent local election. Indicates PB’s potential to engage communities that are marginalized in the traditional political process.

Through what means does PB facilitate participation?

9. Accessibility indicators for idea collection phase, project development phase and voting. Captures aspects of the process implementation that increase access during the idea collection phase, the project development phase and the voting phase.

Is PB fostering equitable distribution of resources?

10. Allocation of PB funds by project type (to be compared with the allocation of comparable funds prior to PB). Describes how PB funds get allocated across types of projects. Informs study of differences in allocation and of equity in the distribution of PB funds.

Impact on Government:

How are the number of PB processes and dollar amounts allocated to PB changing from year to year?

11. Number of new, continued and discontinued PB processes from year to year. Tracks growth and sustainability in PB processes over time.
12. Amount and percentage of funds allocated to PB projects. Tracks the money allocated to PB projects in any one year.

What is the implementation rate of winning PB projects?

13. Project completion rates and final project costs. Highlights the # and % of winning ballot projects that are completed and how much money was spent on them (compared with how much was allocated).

Are additional resources being allocated to projects or needs identified through PB?

14. Amount of additional money allocated to projects and needs identified through PB. Indicates PB’s potential to bring additional funds to communities and/or to allocate funds differently by raising the importance of an issue.

What is the cost to government of implementing PB?

15. Dollar amount spent on PB implementation. Makes transparent how much money is spent on implementation and how that compares with the funds allocated to projects, with quality indicators of the process and with outcomes.

Above is an excerpt of the toolkit. It can be found in full PDF form on Public Agenda’s site here.

About the Participatory Budgeting Project
The Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) is a non-profit organization that helps communities decide how to spend public money, primarily in the US and Canada. Their mission is to empower community members to make informed, democratic, and fair decisions about public spending and revenue.

Follow on Twitter @PBProject

About Public Agenda
Public Agenda is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that helps diverse leaders and citizens navigate divisive, complex issues and work together to find solutions.

Follow on Twitter @PublicAgenda

Resource Link: www.publicagenda.org/pages/research-and-evaluation-of-participatory-budgeting-in-the-us-and-canada

Climate Choices: How Should We Meet the Challenges of a Warming Planet? (NIFI Issue Guide)

Posted on April 26, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The 25-page issue guide, Climate Choices: How Should We Meet the Challenges of a Warming Planet?, was published April 2016 from National Issues Forums Institute and Kettering Foundation, in collaboration with, North American Association for Environmental Education. Climate change is undeniable, this issue guide offers participants three options to use during deliberation on how to address our warming world. The issue guide is available to download for free on NIFI’s site here, where you can also find: the moderator’s guide, an options chart, and a post-forum questionnaire.

From NIFI…

The Environment and Society Series is designed to promote meaningful, productive deliberation, convened locally and online, about difficult issues that affect the environment and communities.

All around is evidence that the climate is changing. Summers are starting earlier and lasting longer. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense. Dry regions are getting drier and wet regions are seeing heavier rains. Record cold and snowfalls blanket some parts of the country, while record fires ravage forests across the West.

The effects are being felt across many parts of the United States. Farmworkers in California’s Central Valley, snow-weary New England business owners, crab fishermen in Alaska, and cattle ranchers across the Great Plains have all seen uncommon and extreme weather. Occasional odd weather and weather cycles are nothing unusual.

But the more extreme and unpredictable weather being experienced around the world points to dramatic changes in climate— the conditions that take place over years, decades, and longer.

Climate disruptions have some people worried about their health, their children, their homes, their livelihoods, their communities, and even their personal safety. They wonder about the future of the natural areas they enjoy and the wild animals and plants that live there. In addition, there are growing concerns about our national security and how climate change might affect scarce resources around the planet and increase global tensions.

This issue guide presents three options for deliberation:

Option One: “Sharply Reduce Carbon Emissions”
We can no longer rely on piecemeal, voluntary efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The only way to protect ourselves and the planet is to tackle climate change at its source by taking coordinated, aggressive action to reduce the CO2 we put into the atmosphere—enforced by strict laws and regulations, and supported by significant investment. If we don’t make averting further climate change our top priority, warming of the land and oceans will accelerate, increasing the frequency of droughts, fires, floods, and other extreme weather events, and damaging the environment for generations to come.

Option Two: “Prepare and Protect Our Communities”
Preparing for and coping with changing conditions must be our top priority. We should work together now to secure our communities and strengthen our resilience in the face of climate-related impacts. That includes protecting our infrastructure—roads, bridges, and shorelines—and ensuring that the most vulnerable members of society have the support they need to adapt to the effects of a warming planet.

Option Three: “Accelerate Innovation”
Across the country and around the world, many private enterprises are already responding to climate change by seeing opportunity. Agricultural biotech companies Monsanto and Syngenta, for example, are poised to profit from newly patented drought-resistant crops. The water giant Veolia, which manages pipes and builds desalination plants, has expanded its operations to 74 countries on five continents. Lucid Energy, a startup in Portland, Oregon, generates electric power from the city’s domestic water pipes.

About NIFI Issue Guides
NIFI’s Issue Guides introduce participants to several choices or approaches to consider. Rather than conforming to any single public proposal, each choice reflects widely held concerns and principles. Panels of experts review manuscripts to make sure the choices are presented accurately and fairly. By intention, Issue Guides do not identify individuals or organizations with partisan labels, such as Democratic, Republican, conservative, or liberal. The goal is to present ideas in a fresh way that encourages readers to judge them on their merit.

Follow on Twitter: @NIForums

Resource Link: www.nifi.org/en/issue-guide/climate-choices

Kettering and China: Thirty Years and Counting (Connections 2015)

Posted on April 24, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The three-page article, Kettering and China: Thirty Years and Counting by Maxine Thomas was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. Thomas recounts the relationship Kettering and China have cultivated from dialogue over the last 30 years. Beginning in 1985, the dialogues have been an exercise to normalize relations with China. 2016 marks the 30th anniversary of the initial dialogue in Beijing, and a celebration is scheduled in fall of 2016 to honor the milestone. Below is a excerpt from the article and the full piece can be found here. Connections 2015 is available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

From these humble beginnings, connections between Kettering and our Chinese colleagues have flourished. In 1985, Mathews and a small team went to Beijing to meet with several Chinese organizations and explore their mutual interest in establishing a dialogue among nongovernmental organizations to complement the work of the two governments. The purpose of these dialogues was to expand and deepen the interactions and understanding between the two societies. There were also concerns about Russia and foreign policy. This meeting began what has evolved into 30 years of collaboration.

Focus on the Public

As the foundation does in all its research, the work has focused on the public. At the first meeting in 1985, participants included David Lampton, now with the Johns Hopkins China Institute, Kettering vice president Rob Lehman, Kettering program officer Suzanne Morse Moomaw, Kettering vice president Phillips Ruopp, and conference coordinator Patricia Coggins. This initial meeting resulted in citizen-to-citizen meetings held the following year in the United States. Over time, participants on the US side included leaders like Robert McNamara, Kenneth Lieberthal, William Taft IV, James Leach, Donald Oberdorfer, and former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Early dialogue members from China included Li Shenzhi, head of the Institute of American Studies in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Huan Xiang, head of the Center of International Strategic Studies of the State Council; and participants from the Beijing Institute of International Strategic Studies. It also included young scholars like Wang Jisi and Yuan Ming, who went on to have illustrious careers and now head the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University.

The central question for these dialogues was how to maintain a US-China relationship in the wake of China, Russia, and US-Russia challenges. All along, the two sides have struggled with the distinction between what our governments were doing and saying and what the public, on both sides, thought about the relationship. Over the years, Kettering networks held deliberative forums using National Issues Forums issue guides on the public’s views of China (China-U.S. Relations: What Direction Should We Pursue? and China-U.S. Relations: How Should We Approach Human Rights?), and Chinese colleagues began some innovative Chinese public opinion research (something not really done before in China). In 2001, we jointly published a volume in Chinese and English, China-United States Sustained Dialogue, 1986-2001, and a summary history of the dialogue. Along the way, we not only got to know more about each other but also were able to present deeper and more nuanced understandings of our countries, something the Chinese were particularly interested in. Each of our trips to China included visits to the US ambassador in Beijing, and Chinese colleagues also took the opportunity to meet with Chinese officials when they were in the United States.

About Kettering Foundation and Connections
The Kettering Foundation is a nonprofit operating foundation rooted in the American tradition of cooperative research. Kettering’s primary research question is, what does it take to make democracy work as it should? Kettering’s research is distinctive because it is conducted from the perspective of citizens and focuses on what people can do collectively to address problems affecting their lives, their communities, and their nation.

Each issue of this annual newsletter focuses on a particular area of Kettering’s research. The 2015 issue, edited by Kettering program officer Melinda Gilmore and director of communications David Holwerk, focuses on our yearlong review of Kettering’s research over time.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Thomas_2015.pdf

The Dartmouth Conference (Connections 2015)

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Keiva Hummel

The five-page article, The Dartmouth Conference by Harold Saunders and Philip Stewart was published Fall 2015 in Kettering Foundation‘s annual newsletter, “Connections 2015 – Our History: Journeys in KF Research”. Saunders and Stewart describe how the Dartmouth Conference came to be a long-time ongoing dialogue between the US and Russia since 1959. Read an excerpt of the article below and find Connections 2015 available for free PDF download on Kettering’s site here.

From the article…

[The] Dartmouth [Conference] is designed not only to reflect American public thinking to our Russian/Soviet partners, but also to share with the American public insights about the experiences, ideas, and thinking behind Russian policy and behavior gleaned from the dialogue. The Americans tend to see a two-way relationship—on the one hand, nearly all US participants accept as part of their responsibility to raise concerns prevalent among the US public. These ranged in Soviet times from Soviet treatment of prominent authors, such as Alexander Solzhenitsyn, to pressing for the emigration of Soviet Jews, as well as other human rights issues; and today, from concerns about Russia’s role

…

The Dartmouth Conference produces three essential kinds of “products.” First, it produces creative proposals to convey to our governments and larger societies that address specific issues in our relationship. Many of these proposals have found constructive resonance in the policy arenas on each side. The March 2015 dialogue at Dartmouth XIX, for example, persuaded the participants that the absence of high-level working groups in those areas where the United States and Russia share interests, such as Syria, ISIS, and the arms control arena, is having a negative effect on the United States’ ability to address subjects clearly in our national interest, as well as the interests of our relationship with Russia.

Second, and as important, the Dartmouth Conference, by engaging many of the same individuals over time, enables each side to understand the experiences, the processes, and the reasoning that ultimately shape policy on each side. Especially today, this kind of in-depth understanding is sorely needed. At Dartmouth XIX, for instance, influential elements in the Russian leadership made clear that they continue to see Russia as a part of the broader Euro-Atlantic community. Russia continues to seek security arrangements within the Euro-Atlantic world that will permit Russia and its region to determine their own political, economic, and cultural future and looks at the future in that context. However, Russia also has its own regional relation- ships, interests, culture, history, traditions, and values for which it demands respect. It will defend these and will reject efforts by others to impose their models and values on Russia and its region.

Third, the diversity of backgrounds, experience, and outlooks represented in the Dartmouth delegations encourages the spread of insights into the “other” throughout our societies. Within a few days of the March 2015 conference, one American participant had been interviewed by CNN—one of a number of articles and blogs that appeared in other media.

…

The agenda at Dartmouth is cumulative, with issues raised but not fully explored at one session forming the basis for the next round. These include arms control, terrorism, regional issues, and opportunities for increased exchanges in fields like preventable diseases, journalism, religion, and others. Beyond these, at Dartmouth XX a central focus was deepening our exploration of how our Russian colleagues understand what they describe as “values” particular to Russia, how these values relate to their behavior toward neighbors, and how they impact their understanding of what it means in practical terms to be “part of the Euro- Atlantic economic, political, and security space” to which they claim to be committed. By pursuing this agenda with persistence, honesty, and integrity, the Dartmouth Conference will continue to play a vital role in enabling Russia and the United States, the only two powers with global reach and global commitments to collaborate more constructively to address critical global issues, from peace and security, to terrorism and development.

Follow on Twitter: @KetteringFdn

Resource Link: www.kettering.org/sites/default/files/periodical-article/Saunders-Stewart_2015.pdf

Registration Open for 4th Int’l PB Conference, May 20-22

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

This year is going to be a great year for conferences! Of course we want our NCDD members to join us at our 2016 National Conference for Dialogue & Deliberation, but we also want to encourage our members to consider registering for the 4th International Conference on Participatory Budgeting in North America this May 20th-22nd in Boston, MA.

This year’s PB conference is especially exciting because it will coincide with the voting phase of the City of Boston’s award-winning youth participatory budgeting process, which adds an extra focus on young people’s participation in deliberative processes to the gathering. Regular registration is only $225 before the early-bird deadline on April 8th, but registration fees operate on a sliding scale that you can learn more about at www.pbconference.org.

Here is how PBP describes the conference:

The 4th International Conference on Participatory Budgeting in North America, organized by the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), will take place in Boston, Massachusetts, USA during the voting phase of their award-winning, city-wide, youth PB process.

The conference is a space for participants and organizers of PB processes to share and reflect on their experiences so far, alongside interested activists, practitioners, scholars, elected officials, and civic designers.

The PB Conference will be organized around three themes this year:

Youth power through PB: PB in schools, youth-only processes, and nearly every other PB process in North America uniquely gives real power to young people – as young as 11! What can we do to encourage even more youth leadership with PB?
PB in practice: What is working well? What has been less successful? What improvements can be made in the way the process is implemented? How can we do better and be more effective with existing PB processes and how can we put more processes in place across North America and around the world.
Measuring impact: How do we define a good PB process? What are the best ways to define success in this context? What are innovative, effective tools and methods we can use to assess the impact of processes that are currently underway as well as to shape new PB processes.

Conference participants will also have the chance to take advantage of a full-day introductory or advanced training on participatory budgeting before the conference May 20th from 9:30am-4pm. The regular registration rate for the trainings is $250, which is separate from conference registration.

The PB Conference promises to be a great gathering to learn more about one of the fastest-growing methodologies in our field, and we hope to see some of our NCDD members there! You can learn more and register for the conference at www.pbconference.org.

Think Global, Print Local: A New Commons-Based Publishing Model

Posted on March 3, 2016 by David Bollier

Some enterprising commoners in Spain and Latinamerica have launched an imaginative crowdfunding campaign to translate and publish my book Think Like a Commoner in Spanish. What makes this publishing initiative so distinctive is its ambition to build a new transnational publishing network that is commons-oriented in content as well as practice. They call it “Think Global, Print Local.”

The plan is to translate my book into Spanish and then use small-scale printing and distribution to publish the book in Spain and throughout Latin America. -- initially Peru, Argentina and Mexico, to be followed later in other locations. The Spanish edition of my book will be entitled Pensar desde los comunes: una breve introducción.

It is difficult for a project this innovative to obtain financing, so the organizers have launched a crowdfunding campaign this week through the Spain-based Goteo website. I’m thrilled to have my book be the focus of this pathbreaking translation/publishing experiment. I'm also excited about having my short introduction to the commons accessible to the Spanish-speaking world!

The “claymation” video by Espacio Abierto of Peru, explaining the project, is particularly wonderful, especially the animated clay rendition of me! If you go to the Goteo website for the campaign, you can watch the video, learn more about the project and contribute to it. It's off to a strong start, but it needs to minimally raise 8.042 euros -- 10,602 euros is optimum.

N. Am. PB Research Board Seeks Input on 2016 Agenda

Posted on December 30, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

In case you missed it, the North American Participatory Budgeting Research Board recently announced that it’s seeking input on what topics folks in the field think PB researchers should prioritize next year. The Board was originally launched by two NCDD member organizations – Public Agenda and the Participatory Budgeting Project – and we encourage the rest of our members to weigh in. You can learn more in the Public Agenda post below or find the original here.

What do you want to see PB research address in 2016?

As part of their work coordinating research on participatory budgeting processes in the U.S. and Canada, our research and public engagement teams have asked for input on potential tasks for the North American PB Research Board to tackle in the coming year (2015-16).

Below are five suggestions. What would you add or amend? Comment or tweet your suggestions to @PublicAgenda with #PBResearch.

Building capacity for data gathering. This group would focus on the challenges facing local evaluators, such as: the lack of staff and volunteering time; lack of capacity to administer, collect, and enter data from surveys; translation of instruments; increasing survey response rates, and so on.
Making PB data more usable, visible, and powerful. This work would work on ways to improve, facilitate, and institutionalize the collection, storage, and sharing of metrics data from all North American PB sites. There are a number of technological, ethical, logistical, and research challenges to making this happen. The final product would a rich, open data source for local PB evaluators and implementers, other PB researchers, and experts to draw on and share.
Building a better infrastructure to support PB. Around the world, many cities have started doing PB without figuring out what kinds of supports they might need to make PB successful. At the same time, other engagement structures and processes that may already be in place may be far less effective from PB. This group would consider ways to use our research and evaluation efforts to help cities learn about PB, and learn from PB, in order to create a stronger engagement infrastructure.
Organizing the evaluation and research track for the PB Conference in May 2016. This group would develop some interesting and thoughtful ways to present PB evaluations and evaluation data at the May 2016 conference in Boston. The overall goal would be to highlight the efforts, experiences, and insights gained through on-the-ground evaluation.
Designing and supporting a larger research project to estimate the impact of PB in North American communities. This group would review the list of research projects that last year’s board members discussed during the development of the key evaluation metrics as important for further understanding PB in North America but beyond the scope and interest of individual, annual evaluation efforts. This group would focus on one of these project areas, design the study and develop a proposal for funding.

You can find the original version of this Public Agenda blog post at www.publicagenda.org/blogs/what-do-you-want-to-see-pb-research-address-in-2016#sthash.qDecnO6t.dpuf.

“Build the City”: The Critical Role of Art, Culture & Commoning

Posted on December 23, 2015 by David Bollier

A new anthology of essays, Build the City: Perspectives on Commons and Culture, powerfully confirms that the “city as a commons” meme is surging. This carefully edited, beautifully designed collection of 38 essays shows the depth and range of thinking now underway. The book was published by Krytyka Polityczna and the European Cultural Foundation in September as part of ECF's Idea Camp convening.

Thinking about cities as commons is so compelling to me because it gives a structured framework for talking our moral and political claims on cities. It helps makes our entitlements as commoners visible, as well as the scourge of enclosure – two concepts that are not particularly welcome topics in respectable political circles.

The essays of Build the City celebrate the idea that ordinary people – tenants, families, artists, the precariat, migrants, community groups, activists – have a legitimate role in participating in their own city. The metropolis is not the privileged preserve of the wealthy, industrialists, investors, and landlords. It is a place where commoners have meaningful power and access to what they need. In developing this theme, this book is a timely complement to the Bologna “The City as Commons” conference in November.

You can download a pdf of the book here – or you can order a hard copy here. Besides ECF and Krytyka Polityczna, the book is a collaboration with Subtopia (Sweden), Les Tetes de l’Art (France), Oberliht (Moldova), Culture2Commons (Croatia) and Platoniq (Spain), all of whom are partners in the action-research network Connected Action for the Commons.

If there is one recurring theme in this book, it is that commoners must devise the means for more open, inclusive and participatory models of democracy in cities – and that art and culture projects can help lead the way.

“Cultural initiatives that challenge the extremely individualized model of the world are worth closer attention,” writes Agnieszka Wiśniewska, a Polish member of the “Connected Action for the Commons” network, “as they may help us re-esetablish social ties and our trust in others.” The real challenge, then, is how to devise effective new structures that can empower commoners in improving governance, building social connection and democratizing power.

EvDem Campaign Reaches Student Democracy Project in Bolivia

Posted on December 16, 2015 by Roshan Bliss

As we work in our own local niches, it’s easy at times to forget that D&D is an international field. But as this recent post from NCDD member organization Everyday Democracy shows, our work continues to impacts and be impacted by a global movement for democracy. This EvDem article shows how ripples their recent social media campaign made it all the way to young people democratizing their student governments in Bolivia. Read more about it below or find the original piece here.

Putting ‘Everyday Democracy’ Into Practice: Making Visions a Reality

When people think of “democracy,” what comes to mind most often is voting. This is certainly an important part of it, but democracy is something we as citizens should be connected to every day.

As an organization, we work to make sure people have opportunities to participate in decision-making at all levels. We believe people should have a voice in what happens in their schools, in their communities, and in their government on a regular basis – not just on Election Day.

This summer to celebrate our Independence Day, we launched a campaign to get people talking about what democracy means to them. People from all over the country contributed their ideas, which ranged from “transparency” to “participation” to “sharing responsibility for the outcomes of government,” and more.

Not only did this campaign draw responses from people all over the U.S., it also caught the attention of Adam Conkright, co-founder of Democracy In Practice, a nonprofit organization based in Cochabamba, Bolivia, dedicated to democratic innovation, experimentation, and capacity building.

“What stood out to us,” Adam explains, “is that several people in the campaign expressed the idea that democracy can be done better, and that improving democracy is like a journey that continues with no real endpoint.” He says this theme really connected with them because that is what Democracy In Practice is all about. “We are trying to help strengthen this growing global movement to improve democracy, and we think the most important thing is for people to start experimenting with different approaches, not only in governments but also in schools, community associations, unions, nonprofits, worker cooperatives, and the like. We’re trying to get people to think outside the box and get creative.”

They’re hoping to inspire others in this way by setting an innovative example themselves. For the past couple years, Democracy In Practice has been working in schools in Bolivia helping students reinvent student government. Adam sees schools as a really great place for this type of experimentation because “the stakes are so low that students can completely redesign their government – each semester if they want to – in ways that would be too risky elsewhere.” He also points out that this kind of experimentation has the added benefit of encouraging students to be engaged and to think critically and creatively about improving their school community.

It’s in this innovative atmosphere that students have replaced elections with random lotteries, rotated meeting roles, and tested out both mandatory and voluntary participation. These and other changes have had an effect: the student government at one school has started the school’s first library, issued its first ID cards to halve student transportation costs, and exposed one teacher’s abuse of power. All the while, the Democracy In Practice team provides suggestions, support, and capacity building to go along with support from school staff. It’s a continual process of trying to make student government more inclusive, representative, and effective in a variety of contexts. A journey with no endpoint.

Bolivians celebrate their independence on August 6^th, and inspired by our campaign Democracy In Practice asked these student governments what democracy meant to them. As Adam explained, the students added their own twist. “Just like in the US, people here in Bolivia come from a variety of different backgrounds and have very different views, but each student government decided to deliberate and agree upon a collective answer to the question.” Not surprisingly, the responses of both groups stressed unity.

The 4th-8th grade student government members at the rural school where Democracy In Practice is working decided that “Democracy is participation, working together, and the community united.”

The other school Democracy In Practice is working in is an urban night high school with much older students. The student government there agreed that “Democracy means working as a team to defend the rights of everyone – unity is strength.”

Adam feels that the next step for Democracy In Practice in this journey is to look beyond schools to find a union or community organization that is open to experimenting in this manner. “People in your campaign said that democracy means ‘participation’, ‘equality’, ‘transparency’, etc.,” he noted. “If we want government to actually embody those beautiful ideals then we’ve all got to roll up our sleeves and develop better ways to govern ourselves. We liked that your campaign encouraged people to think critically, and we appreciate that Everyday Democracy’s work takes an innovative approach to bringing communities together. Hopefully together we can get more people thinking creatively about what democracy means and what it’s going to take to make those visions a reality.”

We have a lot we can learn from each other, whether it’s from our neighbor next door or our friends in a different hemisphere. In fact, the only way we can continue to build a democracy that works for everyone is to continuously examine and improve our current systems, learn from the experiences of others as well as our own, and make sure everyone has a chance to participate.

You can find the original version of this Everyday Democracy post at www.everyday-democracy.org/news/putting-everyday-democracy-practice-making-visions-reality.

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