500+ local governments and organisations trust Go Vocal with their community engagement. Explore our case studies to discover insights and best practices from successful initiatives leveraging our digital platform. Enhance your participation projects by learning from the experiences of fellow engagement practitioners.
The South Holland city of Waddinxveen is the fastest-growing city in the Netherlands and today counts nearly 35,000 residents. 30% of them are under 25, and by 2050 that share will reach 40%. This demographic trend raised a pressing question for the city: how do you involve even the youngest residents in decisions about the future? Esther van Ellinkhuizen, staff member for cabinet affairs and child participation, explains how she does it.
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In Rijswijk, a municipality of around 57,000 residents in South Holland, lies a place with a remarkable history. At Hof van Sion, archaeologists discovered the remains of a monastery dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries. Today, Hof van Sion is part of RijswijkBuiten, a sustainable new neighborhood. When the municipality decided to create a new community meeting place there, it asked residents what they wanted to see. They shared their ideas online using an interactive map.
Located just outside Amsterdam, Amstelveen is working with residents to create a greener, more welcoming, and more inclusive city. Through its online participation platform, residents can help shape long-term plans for the city, contribute to the design of new neighborhoods, and share ideas for smaller improvements that can make a visible difference in everyday life.
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In its first eight weeks, Neckarsulm resolved more than 60 of the first 100 issues submitted through its Go Vocal-powered reporting tool. Residents can report a problem in minutes, follow its status, and receive an update when it is resolved. What may look like a simple service tool has become a practical way to make participation part of everyday life.
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Getting thousands of residents involved in policy? For many local governments, that's still a challenge. Not for Goeree-Overflakkee. With one central participation platform, it now reaches a broad audience, on major policy decisions and local projects alike. What used to be fragmented and ad hoc has grown into a structured approach that makes participation visible, accessible, and scalable.
11,500+ participants. 100+ projects. Amstelveen and Aalsmeer transformed the way they work—from fragmented town hall meetings and scattered tools to one central platform where residents share ideas, feel involved, and help shape policy. With Go Vocal, they built a strong, scalable participation culture.
Amstelveen, a picturesque Dutch municipality neighboring Amsterdam, is a model for building a culture of engagement. The participation team’s focus on promoting engagement internally, clear roles, and successful deployment of their Go Vocal platform through training sessions and a “participation garage” have been instrumental in this process.
Localized flooding and poor stormwater drainage can significantly disrupt communities, causing problems from road and property damage to safety issues due to hydroplaning. In a city like Lancaster, stormwater management is particularly important as they run on a combined sewer system, meaning it collects and transports both domestic sewage and rainwater from the City’s storm drains into a single system of pipes – meaning, these pipes have a lot of work to do! As part of their collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on their larger Green Infrastructure project, the City of Lancaster is seeking to improve their community’s stormwater management quality.
How do you cross the digital divide and blend online and offline (traditional) community engagement? What about during a pandemic? The City of Lancaster used online, offline, and blended approaches to ensure their diverse population was well represented in the City’s new engagement initiatives, which ranged from policing to mobility planning.
