Community involvement

, > Community involvement UK

Action Ideas

 * Participatory journalism
 * Street parties
 * Local quality of life conferences
 * Participatory budgeting
 * Community involvement weeks
 * Youth Forum

[[Image:Img13715.jpg]] Collaborate

 * Open source conference design

New Ideas

 * Places, projects and networks pages in this wiki
 * Sustainable (Your town) pages in this wiki
 * Local sustainability directories in this wiki
 * Local sustainabiity picture libraries (online); share your pictures in this wiki (you need to be logged in to upload files - see Community Portal)

Why it matters
Community involvement is about people and communities being able to play a full part in decision-making, for example local decision-making, and so influence the decisions which affect their lives. It is also about community empowerment, for example through access to appropriate information and adivce. Proper community involvement is not tokenistic. Instead it is on-going, valued, meaningful, provides extensive opportunity and is genuinely and extensively influential. Proper community invovlement is not about allowing mere comment on decisions that have already largely been taken. Instead it begins at the design stage, the very beginning of any project or programme. Proper community invovlement does not include measures of success being foisted upon the community, or worse still simply being ignored. Instead it gives a primary role to the community in judging how successful a project or programme has been.

Global News

 * April 12 2007 - Peter Singer keynote speaker at at Port Phillip Speaks Community Summit, Saturday April 28 2007. Singer, who was nominated by Time magazine in 2005 as one of the world’s top 100 influential people, will talk about building sustainability, both on an environmental and community level. Port Phillip Online / News Australia, Wellbeing

Resources

 * Possibility Handbook: Ten Years of Imagination in Action, by Bliss Browne and Shilpa Jain, download (large) PDF file via Imagine Chicago

Random facts

 * Participatory budgeting, first developed in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1988 to engage the urban poor in setting community-level budgets, had spread to some 200 - 250 municipalities in Brazil by 2006 and been adapted in cities worldwide. Source:Worldwatch Institute
 * Between 2000 and 2006, the total number of cities with participatory budgets grew from 200 to roughly 1,200. Source:Worldwatch Institute

Related Topics

 * category:Community involvement


 * Local needs met locally
 * Sustainability networks
 * Community & voluntary action
 * Department of FUN!
 * Environmental justice
 * Global connections
 * Communities online
 * Community resources
 * Networks and Networking
 * Regeneration
 * Arts and culture
 * Sport

Related wiki

 * BeyondVoting
 * Campaigns Wikia WikiNode - sample article: Particpatory Politics

International Links

 * Democracies Online
 * Civicus - World Alliance for Citizen Participation
 * Imagine Chicago Imagine projects and networks in th UK, Europe and Australia have been modelled on Imagine Chicago.
 * Green Drinks international Organic, self-organising network of people who meet up monthly for a beer at informal sessions known as Green Drinks.
 * Meetup Free service that organizes local gatherings about anything, anywhere. Topic groups include 'New Urbanism and Sustainable Development'

United Kingdom
See separate article - Community involvement UK