International Association for Public Participation - USA
It is that time of the year again: Autumn! We hope you have had a great start to the Fall season, most particularly by checking out our new and revitalized website! We are happy to share with you that we have had many accomplishments in this last month, so read on to get the full scope of the exciting things that have been happening here at IAP2 USA!
You have been asking for a new look and feel to our IAP2 USA website: please take some time to see how we've revised and updated it and let us know what you think. We want to make sure that we meet your needs by making events and materials more accessible and adding new elements, like a job posting section, a resource bank and more.
This is YOUR site – so let us know how we did and where you would recommend additions or improvements.
We would like to extend our thanks to Paulina and MichelangeloSosa and the IAP2 USA Communications Committee for all of their assistance in making this happen.
Due to the IAP2 North American Conference, the October webinar has been delayed by a week.
Starting in October, we feature winners of Core Values Awards at the 2014 IAP2 North American Conference in Winnipeg.
The St Vrain Valley School District in Colorado received the Research Project of the Year Award for "Leadership St Vrain -- Empowering Parents through P2". Dr John Poynton from the district, and Laura McDonald, one of the key parents involved in this initiative, will join us to discuss what they learned in the process and how it's working.
Vancouver Coastal Health Authority in BC won Project of the Year and the "Creativity, Collaboration and Innovation in the Field" Award for CEAN -- the Community Engagement Advisory Network. How successful is it, moving patients from the role of "health care consumer" to "health care participant"?Belinda Boyd and Saori Yamamoto of VCHA will talk about their experiences in making this work.
Register today to join us on this exciting webinar!
Briefly introduce yourself. Who are you, and what do you do?
I am the community relations manager at Metro, the Portland metropolitan area regional government. Metro has a very unique and broad portfolio of issue areas including land use and transportation planning, natural areas and parks, cemeteries, garbage, recycling, and operates venues including the Oregon Zoo and Oregon Convention Center. I lead the team of public involvement staff who engage the public in policy decisions and services. I will transition soon into a temporary role coordinating and leading Metro's diversity, equity and inclusion work.
I am a native Oregonian and grew up in the Portland area with four siblings, camping nearly every weekend and providing the weak link in a family tradition of standout high school basketball players. I received my undergraduate degree in political science at Seattle University and my master’s degree in public policy and administration at California State University at Sacramento during a brief stint in California while parenting two toddlers. I have also lived in Hawaii and taught English in Japan a looooong time ago.
I am the proud mother of two college age daughters and am currently navigating the first year of an empty nest. I worked part time when my daughters were small and have been back in the full-time work force for the last 12 years, most of those at Metro, which has been my introduction and classroom for public engagement. I now live with two cats and, occasionally, several raccoons that have discovered how to get in the cat door. I bike to work most days and enjoy hiking in my free time.
A couple of months ago myself and a few City of Fort Lauderdale staff gathered to begin discussing our plans for a “Citizen’s Academy.” The City had developed and conducted an educational workshop some years back and the time seemed right to bring the academy back to life. The academy would familiarize our neighbors with the new leadership, new departments, new programs, and new initiatives that had come about in the past three years. We also wanted to create something that would help us increase public participation in the programs and initiatives that we were moving forward at a rapid speed. Our thought was simply that the more our neighbors learned about what was happening in city hall, the more they would want to become engaged and become a city ambassador.
Academies are widely used throughout local governments of all different sizes. They consistently remain a popular initiative for bringing citizens into city hall and exposing them to the roles of all the departments. It was easy to find examples, and even templates, of how we could organize and structure our academy. As I began laying out a schedule of courses for our academy, I was sent an email from a friend on what the City of Orlando was doing in way of creating an academy for their citizens. By clicking on a link provided in the email, I was sent to the webpage for the City of Orlando’s iLead campaign. What Orlando was doing was innovative, inspiring, and something I immediately realized was worth trying to emulate.
Did you know that Twitter allows users to compose a custom timeline, containing only the tweets you choose to include? These collections are made possible via Tweetdeck, Twitter’s free management dashboard app. Add a new “Custom timeline” column to your Tweetdeck dashboard, and drag-and-drop the tweets you wish to add. This custom timeline gets its own URL on Twitter, and you can embed a timeline into a blogpost or page.
2. Tag people in your photos
When you add a new photo to a tweet, you can tag up to 10 people who are in the photoundefinedand these tags won’t count against your 140 characters.
3. Create a Twitter photo collage
As a follow-up to tagging, have you tried out Twitter’s photo collages yet? You can share up to four photos in a single tweet. When composing, upload an image and then click on the “Add more” option to keep adding pics.
4. Manage Twitter via SMS
You can turn on tweeting via text message from your Twitter settings, and you’ll receive a custom number where you can send tweets, reply to users, favorite, retweet, follow, unfollow, and a whole lot more.
5. Mute Feature
Rather than unfollowing someone you’d rather not hear from, you can mute the account for as long as you’d like. This can be helpful if you’re looking to manage your Twitter stream or if you want things a bit quieter while others are participating in chats or tweet bursts.
You can access the mute option from any tweet. Click on the “More” drop-down and choose “Mute” from the list of options. You can go back and “unmute” later by visiting the person’s profile.
The Cascade Chapter just awarded a total of $10,000 in scholarships to three students pursuing careers emphasizing public involvement.
Congratulations!
The chapter winners are...
Hannah Silver is a graduate student at Portland State University in the Urban and Regional Planning program. She is passionate about bringing creative, smart, beneficial design to communities in need and loves helping people see that they are able to actively shape their communities. Hannah is currently the PSU Student Representative to the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association and works with the Center for Public Interest Design.
Mariah Acton is a concurrent graduate student at the University of Oregon in Conflict & Dispute Resolution and Public Administration. She is President of University of Oregon Students for Public Participation (UO SP2), a former award-winning Events, Volunteer, and Outreach Coordinator for the Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center, and an award-winning Graduate Teaching Fellow. Her long-term career goal is to become a facilitative mediator focusing on water issues.
Miles Mabray is a concurrent graduate degree student at the University of Oregon where he is about to graduate with a Masters in both Conflict & Dispute Resolution and Nonprofit Management. He helped found the University of Oregon Students for Participation in 2012, interned abroad in Israel and Palestine, and impressed the scholarship panel by being exceptionally politically astute.
1. Infogagement: Citizenship and Democracy in the Age of Connectionis the latest white paper from PACE (Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement). Written by the DDC's Matt Leighninger, the report - downloadable here - describes the innovative collision of journalism, technology, and public engagement. It is based on interviews with PACE members and many other leading thinkers, and presents the main arguments in the form of six sections, a series of charts, and a two-act play. Leighninger, Paula Ellis, and Chris Gates will discuss the report in a PACE webinar next Tuesday, September 16th -
2. Monday, October 6th,will be the next big day for“Text, Talk, and Act,”a nationwide, text-enabled, face-to-face on mental health. Thousands of people have taken part in “Text, Talk, and Act,” which is a Creating Community Solutions event in the National Dialogue on Mental Health. Participating is easy: just get together with 4-5 other people on the 6th and text “START” to 89800.
Should We Be Teaching Public Participation? Student Responses and MPA Program Practices
Robert Hornbein and Cheryl Simrell King
The Evergreen State College
Abstract: An online survey of public administration graduate students in the United States1 was conducted in early 2010 to measure students’ views on public participation. In addition, document analysis was used to investigate MPA curricula and the extent to which NASPAA-accredited programs were teaching courses in this area. Survey results2 indicate that most respondents (a) believe public participation is important to good governance, (b) see themselves as facilitators of public participation, and (c) are interested in learning more about the subject. Analysis of MPA-accredited program curricula showed few graduate-level public administration programs offering courses on public participation and citizen engagement. The findings point to the opportunity, and need, for greater emphasis on public participation in MPA curricula.
Do you have something to share for the Youth, Students, and Emerging Practitioners section in the IAP2 newsletter? Send your ideas, articles, and news to Francesca@voicepublicinvolvement.com !
The St Vrain Valley School District in Colorado received the Research Project of the Year Award for "Leadership St Vrain -- Empowering Parents through P2". Dr John Poynton from the district, and Laura McDonald, one of the key parents involved in this initiative, will join us to discuss what they learned in the process and how it's working.
Vancouver Coastal Health Authority in BC won Project of the Year and the "Creativity, Collaboration and Innovation in the Field" Award for CEAN -- the Community Engagement Advisory Network. How successful is it, moving patients from the role of "health care consumer" to "health care participant"?Belinda Boyd and Saori Yamamoto of VCHA will talk about their experiences in making this work.
A BIG thank-you to everyone that participated in the Membership Survey. Eighty Five of our members took part in the survey and the Board and Board committees are now reviewing the input received. There will be more on "what we heard" in the upcoming newsletters. The winners of the Amazon.com gift certificates are:
· Linda Mather
· Larry Kennings
· Lisa Timmerman
· Adrienne DeDona
· Albert Van Kleek
· Audra Koester Thomas
Members-Only Section
Visit www.iap2usa.org, sign in and click on the "Members-Only" tab to gain access to the monthly webinar recordings, printable IAP2 materials for meetings and more!
Membership Certificate
To receive a free, printable membership certificate from IAP2 USA with your current membership information, email info@iap2usa.org
and we'll send one right over!
Job Postings
To post a job on our website, email info@iap2usa.org with the organization name, job title, closing date, brief job description/highlight and any other relevant information.
Let's build the ultimate P2 resource list!
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a list of all the best public participation resources out there?
Let us know if you have any thoughts or ideas of resources to be included on this list by emailing us at: info@iap2usa.org.
Who We Are
IAP2 USA on Social Media
IAP2 USA advances public participation in the United States by providing its affiliate members with tools and information to conduct high-quality public participation processes, by providing government, industry, non-profit organizations and participants with educational resources to increase the quality and value of their participation in such processes, and by advocating for quality public participation programs based on our Core Values and Code of Ethics. Learn more about us here.
Hannah Silver is a graduate student at Portland State University in the Urban and Regional Planning program. She is passionate about bringing creative, smart, beneficial design to communities in need and loves helping people see that they are able to actively shape their communities. Hannah is currently the PSU Student Representative to the Oregon Chapter of the American Planning Association and works with the Center for Public Interest Design.
Mariah Acton is a concurrent graduate student at the University of Oregon in Conflict & Dispute Resolution and Public Administration. She is President of University of Oregon Students for Public Participation (UO SP2), a former award-winning Events, Volunteer, and Outreach Coordinator for the Columbia Springs Environmental Education Center, and an award-winning Graduate Teaching Fellow. Her long-term career goal is to become a facilitative mediator focusing on water issues.
Miles Mabray is a concurrent graduate degree student at the University of Oregon where he is about to graduate with a Masters in both Conflict & Dispute Resolution and Nonprofit Management. He helped found the University of Oregon Students for Participation in 2012, interned abroad in Israel and Palestine, and impressed the scholarship panel by being exceptionally politically astute.
