Every day, our community of practice is growing stronger. Here’s three examples
First, you have a nation-wide board. In February, your IAP2 USA Board of Directors met in San Diego, joining us from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Portland, Oregon and everywhere in between. We are gaining strength by drawing together more regions across the country. That nation-wide perspective makes our insights and strategies more focused and informed. It was truly a joy to have (almost) all of our board members in the same place, rather than online where we do the majority of our work! There was a lot of great energy in the room.
Second, you are part of a national community. Our board’s reach across the country is also reflected in our membership which is nearing 1000.
When the Board met in San Diego they elected their Executive team. Congratulations to Leah Jaramillo, President; Lisa Carlson, Vice President; John Poynton, Treasurer; and Myles Alexander, Secretary.
You will have an opportunity to get to know all our Board members a little bit better at our upcoming AGM in May. Details coming soon.
CORE VALUES AWARDS: ON YOUR MARKS ... GET SET ... APPLY!
As a P2 practitioner you work hard to ensure that you are developing and delivering great public participation processes. Have you been a part of a P2 project that involved innovation, breaking new ground and/or engaging previously unreached sectors? The time is NOW to give others the opportunity to give you a pat on the back, and apply for the2017 IAP2 Core Values Awards.
The three National Award winners will go on to compete for the IAP2 Federation Core Values Awards against winning projects from other worldwide Affiliates.
Lulu Feliciano is the Outreach Manager at San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). “We oversee transit, parking, traffic, bike lanes, anything that happens on the street regarding mobility.” Lulu first learned about IAP2 three years ago when she was able to get a seat at the City Planning Department’s five-day IAP2 Foundations course. The messages and tools presented in the course (the core values, the spectrum, etc.) struck a chord. Lulu had completed the SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project, during which there was a fair amount of public upset about the redistribution of transit service. “The pain we were going through was beyond transit.” It was clear the community was not feeling heard.
After the IAP2 Foundations course, it was clear that SFMTA needed to create a standardized and streamlined approach to outreach. The agency worked with a variety of stakeholders, conducted numerous focus groups and interviews (both internally and externally) to understand how the public wanted to be engaged and the best way for SFMTA to accommodate those needs. Along with Deanna Desedas, Lulu helped develop Public Outreach and Engagement Team Strategy (POETS), which would eventually mandate that projects requiring a certain number of hours be assigned a public information officer.
Thank you to everyone who responded to our membership survey – we had a 21% response rate! All winners of the Amazon gift cards have now been notified.
Partner Corner
Call for Submissions
Making sense of participatory budgeting and exploring philanthropy’s role in advancing the field globally...
The Hewlett Foundation’s Transparency, Participation and Accountability team and Omidyar Network’s Governance & Citizen Engagement initiative are exploring whether participatory budgeting may advance our strategic goals to increase trust between citizens and government and improve the delivery of public services. We’re aware that there is already a lot of research out there and we’re looking for the right consultant (or team) to help us make sense of it and explore philanthropy’s role in advancing the field globally.
The consultancy is anticipated to start in May 2017 and conclude in October 2017. Expressions of interest (EOI) of no more than two pages are due on April 5, 2017. The full call for EOIs is available here.
Public Agenda: Vermont Workshop to Strengthen and Sustain Engagement
Are you trying to make public engagement more civil, informed and powerful?
Want to meet the engagement challenges and opportunities of Acts 46 (school district consolidation) and 77 (flexible pathways)?
Frustrated with public meetings that aren’t addressing the needs of your community?
The Strengthening and Sustaining Engagement workshop will provide you with the tools and resources you need to authentically engage citizens in productive democratic processes. Saturday, April 1, 2017, Lyndonville, Vermont.Learn more.
Webinar Rewind– Core Values Award winners – Respect for Diversity, Inclusion and Culture
Educators in Saint Paul, Minnesota, found that the demands of the 21st Century meant a change in approach to schooling. They decided to shift from an “expert-based”, “sit-and-get” model to one that involved teachers, students, parents and administrators as equal stakeholders. That model for engagement extended to the Facilities Master Plan, in which learning environments, many of which were built a century ago, were upgraded for today’s needs.
Two small communities – one First Nations, the other “non” – share a 4 km2 island off Vancouver Island. For decades, they lived side-by-side, but separately. The decline in the commercial fishery in the 1980s and the global economic collapse twenty years later created a desperate situation for what had been an economic hub for Northern Vancouver Island. The Village of Alert Bay and the ‘Namgis First Nation decided to work together to create an economic development plan. The result, “Tides of Change”, earned the two communities and EcoPlan International the first-ever IAP2 Canada Core Values Award for Respect for Diversity, Inclusion and Culture.
The March webinar has an extraordinary aspect to it: a chief administrative officer (from Alert Bay) and the director of facilities (from Saint Paul Public Schools), discussing their work in P2 terms.
Webinar on Deck – Core Values Award winners: “P2 for the Greater Good” and “Creativity and Innovation”
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
2pm Eastern | 11am Pacific
Rehabilitating San Francisco’s Van Ness Corridor – formerly the Grand Boulevard in the City by the Bay, but which had fallen into disrepair in the past few decades – is a big job to begin with, and that meant that the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (“Muni”) had to find innovative ways of reaching out to the people affected by the changes – before the changes happened. In our April 11 webinar, Muni’s Lulu Feliciano (left, receiving the Core Values Award in Montréal) will share how they earned the 2016 IAP2 USA Award for Creativity and Innovation.
A lot of us find ourselves asking, “What will happen if I can no longer take care of myself or make my own decisions?” The number of options, decisions and considerations can be overwhelming, and the Advance Health Care Project set up by Vancouver Coastal Health Authority’s “CEAN” – Community Engagement Advisory Network – is designed to help people through that. Professional counsellors volunteer their time to work with people to determine their health care choices for later in life – while they’re still able to make such decisions. On Tuesday, April 11 (2 pm Eastern / 11 am Pacific), our IAP2 Learning Webinar will hear about how CEAN earned the Core Values Award for P2 for the Greater Good.
We are having a harder time listening to one another and an easier time vilifying those who think differently than we do. Social media feeds the flames. Curiosity and compassion have gone AWOL. Conversations are fraught with fears about the future, anger about the past, and disbelief at how we got here. At the same time we have big problems to solve and we need to be able to converse effectively with others to solve them. Mary Gelinas, author of Talk Matters! Saving the World One Word at a Time, will be guiding us towards the best posture for conversations that get things done.
INTERESTING LINKS
Have you found an article that needs to be shared with the P2 Community? Send it to us at ameliaiap2usa@gmail.com
From the Peterborough (Ontario) Examiner: a guest column comparing the state of P2 in Peterborough with the way they’re doing it in nearby London, Ontario. The London approach was featured, along with the engagement process used in Washington, Oregon, in our September 2014 Learning Webinar on “Innovative Engagement”.
The three National Award winners will go on to compete for the IAP2 Federation Core Values Awards against winning projects from other worldwide Affiliates.
innovative ways of reaching out to the people affected by the changes – before the changes happened. In our April 11 webinar, Muni’s Lulu Feliciano (left, receiving the Core Values Award in Montréal) will share how they earned the 2016 IAP2 USA Award for Creativity and Innovation.
Cascade Chapter 
