1. Community Engagement Lean UX Meet-up March 7, 2013

2. Hi!

3. What are we covering? • What is community engagement? • Public participation in civic decisions • Comprehensive community engagement process • Questions

4. I. What is Community Engagement?

5. What is community engagement? Any process that involves the public in problem solving or decision making and uses public input to make decisions.

6. “If you are not at the table, you are probably on the menu”

7. Who is the “community”? Any individual or group of individuals, organization or political entity with an interest in the outcome of a decision.

9. Why is community engagement important? Humans have a basic desire to participate in decisions that affect them. “Tell me, I forget. Show me, I remember. Involve me, I understand.” -Chinese proverb

10. Why is community engagement important? • Facilitates understanding • Improves decisions • By bringing all perspectives to the table • By identifying critical issues early • By promoting opportunities for the for the building of understanding and balanced review of a problem

11. Consider this: • The cultural landscape of participation is always shifting • A variety of opinions occurs naturally with a robust democratic process

12. Economically Technically Viable Feasible Environmentally Publicly Compatible Acceptable Sustainable Decisions

13. III. Public Participation in Civic Decisions

14. Spectrum of Public Participation Increasing Levels of Public Participation

15. Principles of Public Participation • Listen • Be honest • Attitude is everything • Build ownership • Use an interdisciplinary team

16. Issues and Challenges • Avenues for people to provide input (governmental regulations) are not the ways people like to spend their time • Limited time and busy schedules • Lack of trust in government • Will I really make a difference?

17. VI. Comprehensive Community Engagement Process

18. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Public Participation Plan

22. Purpose of the PPP • Respond to direction from the Federal Transit Administration • Demonstrate commitment to involving low-income, minority, and limited-English proficient population community members • Develop a strategy that responds to Bay Area’s diversity

24. Methods • Two rounds of multi-lingual community meetings (29 total) • Activities conducted in 10 languages • 1,350 survey responses • 750 written comments

30. Successes Results • Report deadline met! • New standard of PPP documentation created • Great relationships built with diverse community members • Relatationships solidified with CBO’s

31. VII. Questions?