Participatory Budgeting: Getting People Directly Engaged in Government (Week 13)

Participatory budgeting is a budgeting methodology that seeks to directly involve the public in the decision-making process regarding the allocation of government spending.  The movement is being led by the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP), whose mission statement defines participatory budgeting as “a democratic process in which local people directly decide how to spend part of a public budget”.  This involves getting the public to decide on such things as “the design of the budgeting process”, “what proposals go on the ballot”, and finally, “what gets funded”.  The organization does this to facilitate the engagement of citizens in direct democracy, and to foster a greater interest in the inner-workings of municipal government.

The PBP outlines the participatory budget process as follows: “residents brainstorming ideas, volunteer budget delegates proposals based on these ideas, residents vote on proposals, and the government implements the top projects”.  The group seeks out groups that are not well represented in the political process such as minorities, low-income, and young people, in an effort to bring some different ideas and viewpoints into the traditionally homogeneous world of municipal government proceedings and decision-making.

My initial thoughts on this idea, which will most likely be refined in my upcoming paper on the issue, is that this idea seems to have promise.  Unlike other engagement methods which rally for more general goals such as simply getting out and voting, participatory budgeting offers citizens a more tangible benefit, directly influencing the spending of the area in which they live, regardless of the success of the candidate that they may have voted for.  Their goal of engaging a wide-variety of people is also admirable, as it is often the same types of people that are able to devote the time and effort to creating budget delegations and attending budget meetings in order to have their voices heard.  

As I continue with my research on this topic, I will be interested to discover how the process has been viewed on the other side of the fence; that is, how local governments have responded to the idea of direct democracy in the form of participatory budgets, and whether it has been a source of conflict, or conciliation between government and traditionally marginalized people.  Like most engagement initiatives, it sounds warm and fuzzy, but does it actually work in practice?

All quotations taken from the Participatory Budget Project website, found here: http://www.participatorybudgeting.org/

Community Development and Preaching to the Choir : Can It Be Avoided? (Week 12)

After attending several municipal meetings that are open to the public, it has become clear to me that the same people show up time and again.  These people take it upon themselves to engage with their local government, and to keep themselves informed as to the recent developments within their community.  However, they are a very small minority of the population, and thus, while it is a good thing, their engagement is not indicative of a successful community engagement strategy.

A large portion of the population is unaware of what is going on at the local level, and it is largely not their fault.  Many meetings are scheduled during normal work hours, and people that are living paycheck-to-paycheck have bigger concerns than trying to book time off work to keep track of everything that goes on at city hall.  Unfortunately, these are the people that most often are affected by things that are decided at these meetings that they are unable to attend, as they are the ones that utilize many of both the city and the Region’s social services.

Although all of this information is technically available online for anyone to access at any time, the amount of information that is made available to the public regarding the inner-workings of their local government would likely seem overwhelming to a newcomer.  These documents are often highly-technical and very thick; essentially requiring a full-time job and several degrees to fully understand what is being discussed within them.

So how do you reach people who do not have time to be reached?  I don’t have the answer, but offering abridged and annotated versions of council agendas and minutes could be one such direction municipalities could go, if they are not already doing this.  The Region of Waterloo has time-stamped all of their online archives of past-meetings, and I think this is a great step, allowing people to pick out parts of the meetings that are immediately relevant to their lives.  

To engage an extremely diverse community with different wants and needs the methods need to be extremely open, extremely accessible, and extremely visible.

Place-Making: The Intersection of Urban Design and Community Engagement (Week 10)

Over the past couple of weeks two of our courses, Urban Design and Community Engagement have begun to intersect each other.  The idea of place-making, that is, creating a desirable space within a community where people want to congregate, is an issue that has risen to prominence in the urban design field within the last thirty years.  Place-making, while now thought of as primarily an urban design matter, has its roots in community engagement theory, and it is interesting to think about how these two fields have become more and more intertwined over time.

Jane Jacobs, often hailed as the pioneer of place-making, advocated for an “eyes on the street” approach to urban design.  This design philosophy emphasized the needs of city dwellers over the needs of the architect, who were too often concerned with designing places that looked good in a portfolio, rather than places that felt good for the people that lived there.  By creating “places”, cities can create areas where people from all walks of life can gather and interact, building both social fabric and capital.

Well-designed and well-utilized public spaces can also play an important role in community engagement.  They can serve as rallying points for protests, speeches, and rallies, and a gathering point for civic engagement and activism.  Cities and businesses are aware of this as well, and it is likely the reason that traditional schools of urban design often emphasized creating areas where people passed through, rather than where people stayed and socialized.  In Happy City, Montgomery gives the example of a business soliciting advice for how to best implement spikes around a tree to keep people away.  This type of design philosophy is emblematic of a distaste for the public that many, particularly “upper-crust” institutions (i.e. Wall Street financial institutions) hold, and until very recently, have reflected in the very architecture that these institutions are located in.  Alongside this, a city hall with a large public space in front of it almost invites political rallies and spectacle, and it would be interesting to see how many cities have embraced, or run, from this very real possibility.

The intersection of Urban Design and Community Engagement, particularly with respect to place-making, has been interesting to watch develop, and I am curious to see if any more intersections will occur as both courses continue to progress.

Region of Waterloo “Strat Chat” & Youth Engagement (Week 9)

On Thursday I attended the Region of Waterloo’s “Strat Chat” chat hosted at Conestoga College.  The speaker at this event was Mike Murray, the Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) of the Region of Waterloo, who was at the college to talk about some of the issues that will make up a large part of the 2015-2018 Region of Waterloo Strategic Plan.  The presentation itself was thematically similar to the “Big Shift” presentation that we went over in-class; dealing with topics such as demographics, population growth, and urban intensification.  Feedback was given throughout the presentation through the use of some “i clicker” like devices, along with a Q&A session at the end of the talk.  One such question asked how people would prefer to receive news from the Region, and, to no one’s surprise, social media was identified as the number one way in which we, the youth, would like to receive our news.

As an engagement piece, it was about as successful as you could expect.  The audience seemed engaged throughout, and there were numerous questions at the end of the presentation.  I also learned about the Region of Waterloo’s on-line “Strat Chat” discussion website, where citizens are invited to give input throughout the lengthy strategic plan development process; so it was successful in its goal raising awareness regarding the website.  It was also good to see the Region directly engaging with students, who, while largely seasonal residents of the region, make up a large part of the population, and use a large amount of Region services, most notably the Grand River Transit system.  It will be interesting to check out the “Strat Chat” website periodically throughout the development of the strategic plan to gauge how many people take to offering feedback, and whether city staff and politicians not only have a visible presence on the website, but also use it to directly interact with citizens.   

You can find the website here: http://stratchat.regionofwaterloo.ca/

Community Conversations Methodology, Pt. 2 (Week 7)

6) Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative inquiry is defined, somewhat long-windedly as being “the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations and the world around them.  It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system life when it is most effective and capable in economic, ecological and human terms.  Appreciative inquiry involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to heighten positive potential.  It mobilizes inquiry through crafting an unconditional positive question often involving hundreds or sometimes thousands of people” (149).  Put more simply, it is a collective back-patting session. 

Appreciative inquiry argues that we should focus on possibilities, not problems, to move from “skepticism to a spirit of Namaste [after looking it up I discovered that Namaste basically means hello so I’m not entirely sure what is meant by this]” (152).  After ditching skepticism and critical thinking you are then invited to “walk through the forest of success” to hear how great other people at the meeting are as well and then with some hot yoga or something [just kidding] (153).  As a future [hopefully] public servant I would likely feel pretty weird walking through a “forest of success” while large amounts of people still have to, say, go to a food bank so they don’t die of starvation. 

7)   Common Meaning Questionnaires

Common meaning questionnaires involve queries like “What does “together” mean to me”.  The goal of a question like this is to establish a kind of common ground between all of the people completing the questionnaire, which in turn, is supposed to facilitate collaboration and productivity.  As an ice-breaker this is all well and good, but of course the real meat of the meeting comes after this stage.  You can also draw pictures with crayons and markers if that’s more your speed.

8)  Food, Movies … And Conversations

The main idea in this section is that food and movies are facilitators of conversations, which is true.  And actually, there are some interesting ideas in here for public servants who wish to get a better read on their community.  For example, the “progressive dinner”, where those who serve the community venture from the forest of success and actually get out into it and see the contrast between public-school breakfast clubs and swanky private daycares (173).  I think it can be easy to live within a comfortable bubble [I’m certainly guilty of this] and forget how people who are different than you live.  Getting out there and seeing a diverse group of people puts your head back on straight, and that’s a good thing.

9)  Giving Voice to Photos

Photograph as conversation catalyst is the crux of this section.  It’s light on content outside of the usual long autobiographical success story featuring Paul Born.  Again, I have no issue with this section; photos can act as a jumping off point for conversations.

10)  Building A Learning Community

Learning communities are groups of people within communities that, over time, collectively build their shared knowledge base and apply this knowledge to help improve their community.  Much like all of the other aforementioned steps, the main way to keep these learning communities effective is to ensure that they are constantly having conversations, both in-person and electronic. And really, all of the steps before this one are done in order create a learning community, one that does not stagnate and become compartmentalized off in their own little groups.

Despite some silliness and back-to-grade-schoolesque cheese in some of Born’s suggestions, this is a noble goal, and, while I personally do not buy into all of the steps he’s outlined, I can see where he’s coming from.  People do have to talk, so we should make the process of talking more engaging.

Community Conversations Methodology, Pt. 1 (Week 6)

In his book “Community Conversations: Mobilizing the Ideas, Skills, and Passion of Community Organizations, Governments, Businesses, and People”, Paul Born argues that “effective community conversations are the means by which CCIs [Comprehensive Community Initiatives] are more likely to be successful” (4-5).  In order to unpack his thesis, we must first know what Born means when he talks about CCIs.  Briefly put, CCIs are groups of problem-solvers that seek to examine problems comprehensively, creating a multi-faceted framework through which problems are examined, and hopefully solved (4).  In order to do this,1 Born argues, they (CCIs) must know how to converse properly.  This blog post will examine the first 5 steps in Block’s 10-step how-to-hold-a-conversation methodology that he outlines within his book, and next week I will discuss the final five.

1) Conversation Cafés

The first suggestion that Block has for us is to hold something called a conversation café, which he defines as “an exchange of ideas, feelings, and thoughts between people” (97), oddly enough, this sounds a lot like how the word “conversation”  is traditionally defined, that is, as being an, “informal exchange of ideas by spoken words”. It seems as though Block’s first suggestion on how to hold a community conversation is to hold a conversation.

As the section progresses, Block offers six idea on how to create an effective conversation / conversation café.  These suggestions are, in order:

             

               1)  Give the room a fun feel.

               2) Choose the questions and create a menu.

               3)  Consider “wicked” questions

               3 I think this is supposed to be 4)  Follow a process

               5)  Enjoy!

               6) Debrief the event to gather information

From a glance, it seems as though the most important / interesting suggestion Block offers here is the second on how to choose the proper questions.  However, there is not much in this section outside of a plug for his website (tamarackcommunity.ca!) where you can download a “conversation café menu template”, which sounds as if it would be a great way to facilitate unique conversations. However, there are a few suggestions for questions in this section, including, “Why does poverty exist”, and why the people at the conversation cafe have attended the conversation café, which they may be wondering themselves after being given an official tamarackcommunity.ca conversation menu.

2) Peer to Peer Conversations

Peer to peer conversations are defined as a way to “help obtain input from a peer group in a relatively quick and structured way” (107).  Much like the conversation café, Block has offered a step-by-step process on how to do this effectively:

               

               1) Unpack (twenty minutes)

               2) Question (twenty minutes)

               3) Group discussion (thirty minutes)

               4) Reflection (five to ten minutes)

This seems a lot like conversation cafes, but without the fun room.  There’s nothing wrong with the suggestion, but to me it seems like a fairly obvious thing to do when problem-solving within an organization.

3) The Top 100 Partners Exercise

Paul Born begins this section by quoting himself, “Who invited that schmuck” (115).  The “Top 100 Partners Exercise” is an exercise that has you list potential partners for whatever your CCIs cause is.  Basically, you divide a sheet of paper into four sections (only after writing the name of the “collaborative” you are involved in, of course).  These sections are: business, voluntary, government, and people.  You then list as potential people and organizations as you can, trying to hit 100.  From there you rank the people and organizations by desirableness, and then figure out a way to get them to work with you.  Finally, you need to add all of these names into a “relational database” so you can work with them in the future.

I have no issues with this step, outside of being reminded to put my name on my work.  I agree with Born on the importance of collaboration in solving complex problems such as poverty, as no single organization is equipped to do so on its own.  For example, the Waterloo Regional Food Bank is made up of more than one hundred organizations that all help on the various stages of the food supply-chain.  Acting alone, there is absolutely no way in which they could be as effective as they currently are.  The “Top 100 Partners” exercise seems as though it would be an effective way for a new, non-profit agency to create a rolodex of potential collaborators.

4) Future Search Meetings

Future search meetings are defined as a “task focused” type of meeting that “brings people from all walks of life into the same conversation: those with resources, expertise, formal authority, and need”,  and allows them to tell their stories in order to “discover their common meaning through dialogue, which allows them to make concrete action plans” (129).  Again, this is a fine suggestion, however, it is extremely similar to the first two steps of the methodology, holding “conversation cafes”, and having “peer to peer conversations, again telling us to make sure the room is nice, and making sure we are asking the right questions.

5) Open Space Conversations

The idea of open space meetings is to hold meetings with no structure or authority, allowing people to “have their say on their terms”, by allowing groups and conversations to form organically (139).  This could be useful or chaotic, depending on the issue being discussed and the people in attendance.  For example, I doubt that this idea would work particularly well at a meeting discussing emotionally charged issues such as religion, race, etc, and would be just as likely to start fist-fights as to foster meaningful dialogue.  However, it could be a useful tool in a more formal setting such as a conference, where there is an assumed level of competency, knowledge, and (hopefully!) rationality in each member of the conversation.

Next week I will discuss steps 6-10, and offer my thoughts on the methodology as a whole.

Is Canada Boring? : How the Media Influences Engagement (Week 5)

After having studied the subject of community engagement for the past several weeks, the most pressing question within the field seems to be how to get people to engage in conversations about their community.  And, after studying this question, again, for several weeks, the only thing that has become clear is that there is no one-size-fits-all remedy that will inspire thousands of (very different) people to rally around a part of their lives that we have been encouraged to neglect.  We are now living in the so-called “Age of Isolation”, where our strongest connection to the outside world (including our physical community) is the media that we choose to consume.  In Canada, we are uniquely situated in that we are the next-door neighbour to the biggest mass-media producing powerhouse in the world, the United States.  As such, we are constantly exposed to American culture, American issues, American entertainment, and most importantly for the purposes of this subject, American politics.

American media, by having access to a vastly larger audience, and thus, an exponentially larger budget than its Canadian counterpart is, almost as a rule, better produced than Canadian media.  Because of this, American media is by and large, more interesting and satisfying to consume than Canadian media, including American news outlets.  News stories in the U.S. are presented as narratives with polarizing figures that, depending on your stance, are either “good” or “bad”.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the American political sphere, which runs solely on a two-party system.  By engaging in this system you, by necessity, have to make a choice as to where you stand.   Of course, in doing so, you are also declaring what you do not stand for, and thus the political narrative has been created; your side, of course, represents the protagonist, while the other is the irrational, immoral, and frankly stupid antagonist.

Canadian politics, with its multiple, amorphous political parties and (at least slightly) less sensationalist media however, are much more subdued and civil, and thus are also much more boring.  Obviously, people will not engage in things that bore them, and this trickles down into the realm of local politics, which I would venture to argue, are seen as the epitome of boring by many people not within the field.  This culture of malaise surrounding local politics and community issues results in no-one knowing what is going on in their own back yard, but being intimately familiar with their neighbours.

What does this mean for community development at the local level?  Nothing good.  Generally, people not directly involved with local politics are able to live their lives in relative comfort without ever directly engaging in the process that makes their lives possible.  Unless of course, any type of scandal comes to light.  Then the knives are sharpened, the pitchforks come out, and all hell breaks loose.  The result of this is that if a random person is asked about their local government they will likely respond negatively (citing lazy bureaucrats or entitled union-workers) or with indifference.  If things are good, or good-enough, why should anyone outside of the local political process choose to engage with, or be passionate about it?  It is much more satisfying to engage with the manufactured antagonism of American politics, where the issues are polarizing and the story-lines are easier to follow and digest.  I would bet that most people (including me) know more about Barack Obama than Stephen Harper, and I am not entirely sure what this means, outside of the fact that I am clearly more engaged in American culture than Canadian. 

Because we live in a connected society, it is easy to look outside of your own community for distractions, and many of us choose the biggest distraction in the game, the United States, to provide our political fix.  This has led to Canadian’s disengaging from their country and by extension, their communities.  Unfortunately, it seems as though the only way to engage more people in local politics is to make it more theatrical, more narratively structured. For example, political parties could be introduced at the local level so that people have a group (community?) of like-minded people to rally around and define themselves as.  It seems strange that at the local level, where it is theoretically easiest to form physical communities, that we vote for individuals, and individual platforms, rather than voting for a political party, which is itself a community.  Perhaps by voting for communities we could become inspired to form our own, and thus engage more with our own surroundings.