How do Local Governments Inspire Community Engagement and Perform Public Outreach? Pierce County, Washington State
Tacoma, Washington: The City of Destiny
I live in the city Tacoma within Pierce County. I am working towards beginning a national conscious impact initiative that works to empower individuals to create social change within their communities through conscious use of technology. There’s been significant twists and turns in planning things out. However, with our big dreams it is inevitable we will have to become familiar with local government and their process behind human/community outreach services.
I decided to start looking into my local government and see what information is available for citizens of Pierce County regarding community outreach services. What I have found is more than troubling, and I wanted to share just a little bit of my experience so far. I also want to explain how I intend to get a better understanding of my local government’s processes and resources, and share my experience in doing so.
Finding Local Government Community Outreach Services
Starting from the Pierce County homepage it’s easy to find information about government, county services, and business but not so clear as to what I should look for to find community resources or where I might find it. There is a link at the bottom that provides us access to a page with information on the 2018 budget and how to get involved, but that’s about it in terms of community engagement from the Pierce County homepage.
To find community services you have to actually look for human services underneath the services tab. Underneath the businesses tab, I was encouraged to find a link to a site for Pierce County’s economic development board. Unfortunately, I could find little information about actual economic development; Instead, I found information regarding businesses and aimed at bringing new businesses into Tacoma-Pierce County but nothing about ACTUAL economic development within the area:
“Economic development is the process by which a nation improves the economic, political, and social well-being of its people.”
What's the Bigger Priority? Community Engagement or Bringing in More City Dollars?
Now keep in mind, there is an entire website dedicated to Pierce County’s Economic Development board:
with an attractive user interface and well organized information. While, the actual economic development initiatives, they call ‘human services’, are only listed on the pierce county webpage. The user interface is confusing, disorganized, and hard to navigate.
Only the Beginning
This is just a snippet of what I have been finding throughout my local government research and it's sad to say, things get even sadder from here. I've taken it upon myself to take tonight to sift through the human services webpage and see what I can find. Tomorrow, I am going to have a final draft of questions for the PCHS dept. and on Friday morning, I am going to do everything I can to reach out to the human services department with a list of questions regarding their human services and priorities in community engagement and outreach. I will be reporting the answers on Steemit as well.
The Importance of Understanding Local Government for Imagine Conscious Collective
This is just the start of many encounters ICC will have with local governments, and is really a way for us to test the waters in speaking to public officials about community outreach initiatives. The end goal is for us to walk away from this conversation with a better understanding of how local policymakers within the scope of community impact, coordinate and execute community service programs and initiatives. Because in order to create social change, interaction with local governments will be inevitable. It is also important for us to see how firmly funded community initiatives are carried out to get an idea of what all is possible with a fully funded organization and how we might help improve their processes.
Please, take a look at the website for yourself and see what information you can find! Or, check out your own local government resources. How important is it that information about community services be accessible to citizens? What role should local policymakers play in community development and engagement? What services do you think should be provided for economic impact by local government boards?
@meowzinator I provide free community improv classes in Austin at a local rec center and have been doing it for the past three years on a weekly basis. I recently met up with the Park & Recs city wide program manager to begin the process of becoming a vendor so that Park & Rec programs from around the city can hire my organization to provide services.
In short, you can only get so much from a website. The reality is that there's just too much information to handle, and city workers are often overworked and underpaid. Keeping this in mind (the reality), you need to have patience and consistency with your approach. I think you are on the right path with attaining as much knowledge as possible, just know that you have to be prepared to work your ass off to get noticed.
From my experience, my best advice would be to meet with someone in person. You likely will not get much feedback via email. My second best advice would be to start doing what you want to do NOW. There's always a way to start doing what you want now. If it requires money to start, then it'll likely take a long time to get anywhere as the process of receiving a grant is another level of work.
The city supports people who are taking action and doing things for the community. Keep that in mind. You'll get a positive response if you have actions to show.
I hope this helps! I'm excited for you! Keep at it and you will find the way.
Thanks for sharing here. I'd love to hear your thoughts about my recent post: Do The Little Things In Life Really Matter?
Thank you so much! I hope to prove though, that a website isn't much considering we have several dedicated to other services related to bringing business and money into the city. For example, the economic impact website. It isn't just this I plan to talk about, but the fact that many informational materials required for the county to receive federal funding from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development are hard to find and the documents that are available just aren't up to par with the legal federal requirements, literally some of the documents totally skip several key requirements.
I really appreciate your support and encouragement it's inspiring to hear someone else's story about creating community impact and I hope down the road we can do business together. I am definitely going to work as hard as I can to start taking action now. I am still working on building my confidence up but people like you help me feel better about what I hope to acheive. I really can't thank you enough for your comment, and I will check out your article now!
Thank you again,
Zamara!
Zamara I am truly excited for you. We need more people who have the motivation, drive, and guts to weed through the depths of these oftentimes confusing and old systems in order to discover their limitations and offer new a better solutions! There's so much value in that. The huge realization I have had, especially in working with the city, is that we have much more power than we think. Put politics aside and just go straight to the source. You can actually make real change there. You're on the right path!
This is really interesting! I hope you'll continue to post on this initiative. I'm excited to see how it turns out.