Blog
Go Vocal’s blog—get insights, advice, and all the latest information on trends to help you foster meaningful engagement.
Go Vocal’s blog—get insights, advice, and all the latest information on trends to help you foster meaningful engagement.
At Go Vocal, we believe that a combination of synchronous and asynchronous participation opportunities makes for the most qualitative processes. Before COVID shook the world, these synchronous opportunities were mostly happening offline. Public engagement sessions, town halls, focus groups, and citizens’ panels were almost entirely organized as in-person events. However, the past year has shown that we can – and should – reconsider.
Peñalolén (241,599 inhabitants), a Chilean commune in the province of Santiago, launched a participatory budget to give citizens a say in their neighborhoods’ urban planning projects. In each neighborhood, citizens could voice their opinions and vote on what they think deserves the municipality’s investment. Over 24,450 inhabitants participated in this project via the online platform.
At last year’s COP26 – the United Nations Climate Change Conference – countries agreed to address coal’s role as the most polluting fossil fuel. But not before the wording was watered down from “phasing-out” to “phasing-down” coal power. Since then, the UN’s António Guterres warned in April that “governments and corporations are…adding fuel to the flames by continuing to invest in climate-choking industries” and yet, just this month – on the heels of this year’s COP27 – the UK approved a new coal mine. One step forward, three steps back? Unfortunately, this is just one example from many governments’ missteps on climate action. If the world’s democracies are failing on the climate crisis, how can we motivate them to step up to the challenge? In our experience, participatory democracy is up for the task.
You know that your residents want to be more involved in local decision-making, but how do you involve them both meaningfully and efficiently? The right community engagement software makes this possible—enabling you to involve residents, businesses, visitors, and other stakeholders without adding complexity or overwhelming your resources.
