A Citizen Alternative to ISIS
A Citizen Alternative to ISIS
4th Int’l Conference on PB in N. America Opens Call for Proposals
Before you check out for the holiday this week, we encourage our members to consider responding to the call for proposals for the 4th International Conference on Participatory Budgeting in North America, which will be hosted in Boston, MA from May 20th – 22nd, 2016 by the Participatory Budgeting Project, one of our great NCDD member organizations.
The deadline to submit for the conference is December 18th, 2015, so don’t wait too long! You can read the full call for proposals here.
This year’s conference will coincide with the voting phase of the Boston’s youth participatory budgeting process, which adds an exciting focus on young people’s participation in deliberative processes to the gathering. 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:
2016 Conference Themes
- 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.
Any proposals for workshops, presentations, panel discussions or other creative formats focused on one of these three themes will be welcomed for consideration, and you can send in proposals via the submission form at www.pbconference.org/submit. For more information, email PBP at conference@participatorybudgeting.org.
Again, the deadline for submissions is December 18th, so send in your proposals soon! Registration for the conference is slated to open in January, and early registration will end in April. We can’t wait to see how this great gathering turns out!
For more information on the 2016 PB Conference, you can visit www.pbconference.org.
Making a Difference: Friday’s Close Up Broward Youth Policy Summit Expo
As you will recall from my last post, I was headed down to Broward County to see the great work being done there by the ESOL department within the district and by the Close Up Foundation. I am happy to say that it was a wonderful experience to see so many young immigrants dedicated to improving their communities and learning what it means to be a citizen. These 200 young people, almost all of whom have been in this country for three years or less, presented their civic-oriented proposals for feedback and discussion with local citizens, community leaders, and other interested parties. An overview of the expo can be seen below.
What do I like about this? Where to start! It gives young people, new to this country a chance to engage in the process of civic life and civic work. It gets them thinking not only about problems, but about solutions. It develops their communication skills and their ability to talk with leaders and community members, such as district superintendent Robert Runcie, who can make a difference in their lives. No, let me revise that. It allows these kids to have a sense that THEY are making a difference THEMSELVES. Isn’t that what we want for our young people? That sense of belonging, of advocacy, and of efficacy as citizens?
Over 200 fresh young immigrants share policy proposals with the state and Broward community
I had the great pleasure of talking with many of these kids about their proposals, and it was incredibly refreshing to hear them articulate a passion for change and a desire to make a difference as residents and, yes, as citizens. They addressed issues of concern to both them and their community, were open to feedback and suggestions to strengthen their proposals, and demonstrated an understanding of the difference they could make, and why this effort mattered. It was wonderful to see. In the rest of this post, you can take a look at just a few of the dozens of proposals that these young immigrants shared.
How can we reduce testing in schools and still ensure kids are learning?
Let’s make sure that everyone has access to quality health services!
How can we make sure that schools have equitable access to resources?
Let’s make sure that all able-bodied people can both work and support their families!
It doesn’t have to be 15 dollars an hour to make a difference and help both business and the community!
We need to address issues with teen violence in schools, especially in low SES areas!
These are just a few of the many different policy proposals that these wonderful kids came up with. Others involved protection of the environment, changing the role of the school counselor away from a testing coordinator to actual counselling, medical marijuana, school bullying, teen pregnancy, and so many more areas of relevance and concern in the immigrant community, in Broward, in Florida, and in the nation. Kudos to both Broward ESOL and the Close Up Foundation in this work. You can find additional images on the Expo at the Broward ESOL Facebook page, as well as through the Close Up Foundation’s Twitter feed (and they worth a follow!). I am excited to see what comes next, and I hope that we here at the Florida Joint Center for Citizenship might find ways to help in this effort down the road. So much promise!
Bürgerhaushalt der Stadt Köln – Jahr 2010
Civic Tech and Government Responsiveness
For those interested in tech-based citizen reporting tools (such as FixMyStreet, SeeClickFix), here’s a recent interview of mine with Jeffrey Peel (Citizen 2015) in which I discuss some of our recent research in the area.
SPD Online- Antrag 2011
Case: SPD Online- Antrag 2011
call for CIRCLE pieces on the relationship between electoral and broader civic engagement
CIRCLE has been soliciting and editing guest posts for the home page, which amount to short publications that reach the field of youth civic engagement pretty broadly. The latest call went out today:
CIRCLE is seeking proposals for guest posts to our website, civicyouth.org, focused on relationships between electoral engagement and civic life and democracy more generally.
Over the next year, a great deal of time and money will be spent on reaching voters—including young voters—in the U.S. We would like to convene a conversation about whether and how efforts to promote youth electoral engagement (e.g. voting, learning about candidate positions, volunteering for a campaign) help to increase the prevalence, equity, and quality of youth civic skills, attitudes and engagement generally. We define civic engagement broadly. Questions to discuss could include:
- What are the ways in which electoral engagement is integrated with other forms of engagement and how is this best done? Does the focus on youth voter engagement also strengthen other forms of engagement? What opportunities would facilitate this link?
- How are skills and attitudes developed or furthered as a part of electoral engagement related to non-election civic activities?
We are looking for proposals from a variety of perspectives, including people who run youth programs, researchers, funders, teachers, etc. We will consider proposals that share or reflect on qualitative and/or quantitative data, as well as program evaluations and reflections on programs and theoretical arguments. We will give preference to posts that discuss any connection to K-12 schools and curricula, households as settings for discussions or civic activities, or ways in which young people learn and practice being civic through cultural and peer influences.
Laura Chasin: A Loss for the Field and for Humanity
We are so sorry to be sharing the heartbreaking news that Laura R. Chasin – co-founder of the Public Conversations Project and a pillar of the D&D field – passed away on November 17th. Many of us knew and loved Laura Chasin, and greatly admired her work at PCP. She was a great supporter of NCDD, and a dear friend of mine. Please take a minute to read PCP’s message about Laura below, and if you knew Laura, I encourage you to click the link at the bottom of the message and share a reflection about Laura.
Remembering Laura R. Chasin
1936-2015
With heavy hearts and deep sadness, we share the news that our founder and greatest supporter Laura R. Chasin died unexpectedly on the evening of Tuesday, November 17th.
A graduate of Bryn Mawr College, with masters degrees in Government from Harvard and social work from Simmons College, Laura’s interests spanned political science, social work, psychodrama, family systems therapy, dialogue, and transpartisanship.
Public Conversations Project began as a question that Laura, a family therapist, asked herself – and her colleagues at the Family Institute of Cambridge – after watching a televised debate progress from disrespectful to angry to chaotic. Essentially: could the same methods that help families have safe, constructive conversations in counseling sessions also help people talk with each other in situations where there are deep differences in identity, beliefs, and values?
Laura became a co-facilitator of a multi-year, clandestine dialogue between Boston area pro-choice and pro-life leaders (following the murder of two women outside local abortion clinics), a story of sustained relationships across deep differences famously covered in The Boston Globe in 2001. From there, Laura and Public Conversations facilitated dialogue on a wide range of divisive issues, including Public Conversations’ work with the Anglican Communion. She also did extensive post-graduate training in marital and family therapy in conjunction with a private psychotherapy practice.
In the field of dialogue and deliberation, she is widely known and deeply respected for a foundational guide to she produced with Founding Associate Maggie Herzig, Fostering Dialogue Across Divides: A Nuts and Bolts Guide from The Public Conversations Project. Laura previously served on the boards of the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Spelman College. She has also served on the boards of the Children’s Defense Fund, the Conflict Management Group, and the Institute for Faith and Politics, and on the steering committee of the Common Ground Network for Life and Choice. Deeply passionate about the transpartisan movement, Laura also worked closely with No Labels and other organizations that encourage collaboration across the aisle.
Laura and Dick Chasin were married in 1971. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, including Laura’s three children and three step-children, as well as her grandchildren. Recently, as pictured below, Laura and Dick were honored by the New York State Dispute Resolution Association.
Here is the original note to friends and followers (including a poem) from Public Conversations Project. If you would like to share your memories of Laura, we encourage you to do so here. Finally, here are some images of Laura and her colleagues throughout Public Conversations’ history.
You can find the original version of this PCP announcement at www.publicconversations.org/news/remembering-laura-r-chasin-founder#sthash.BIgyT0yy.dpuf.