Tell the Mayor: Support PB in NYC today!
Dear PBNYC Supporter, Now is the chance to make real democracy available for all New Yorkers! I’m writing to ask you to join your neighbors in supporting a letter calling for an expanded and more inclusive Participatory Budgeting in New York City (PBNYC) process. After six successful years, PBNYC has established itself as the largest […]
Taking PB to Scale
Participatory budgeting (PB) has been successfully implemented in districts, cities, and school districts across North America, allowing members of these local communities to directly decide how to spend part of a public budget. From wards in Chicago, to schools in Phoenix, to across the city in Boston, we’ve seen hundreds of local-level PB success stories […]
U lyk 2 text 4 PB
At PBP we provide technical support and expertise in advocacy, outreach, organization, and implementation for partners working on PB processes. In our Participation Lab we regularly pilot and test tools and procedures to help partners succeed. In the next few months we’ll be sharing tools for using Outreach, Information Management, Digital Voting, and more. This […]
Social Justice with Participatory Budgeting
Social justice was a goal and a value of the original experiments with participatory budgeting in Brazil. The early pioneers in participatory budgeting saw it as a tool to redirect money towards sections of society that were often left out of public spending. Giovanni Allegretti, researcher at the Center for Social studies of Coimbra University […]
What 43 elected officials think about participatory budgeting
Participatory budgeting is one of the fastest growing democratic innovations in North America today. It brings elected officials and civil servants together with their communities to take public dollars and put them toward projects that residents chose. Since this is not the business-as-usual way that governments budget their money, what do elected officials actually think […]
PB in Hinton, AB: Small Town, Big Ideas
With a population just under 10,000, participatory budgeting has made its way in the town of Hinton, Alberta. Its recent cycle engaged residents to manage $100,000 of the public budget to fund town infrastructure and programs that benefit the community. The office of Mayor Mackin from the Town of Hinton shares lessons learned from adapting […]
Making PB more Inclusive: Lessons from Long Beach
University student at California State University in Long Beach, Jessica Bracho has participated as a budget facilitator for PB Long Beach. Studying Sociology, she worked closely with PB researcher Professor Gary Hytrek who sparked her interest in community development. Jessica shares the valuable lessons learned in making PB inclusive and a great experience for all […]
Beyond Capital Projects: PB funds Basketball & Soccer Program
PB funded an After School Soccer and Basketball program in Vallejo following an amazing collaboration among the Vallejo City Unified District (VCUSD), the City of Vallejo and the Greater Vallejo Recreation District (GVRD). The After-School Sports Program was a PB proposal implemented by the VCUSD where $50,000 was allocated to provide soccer and basketball programs […]
University of Toronto: The importance of citizen led budgeting
PBP’s Josh Lerner delivered the keynote talk at the University of Toronto’s Big Cities, Big Ideas panel on May 5th, discussing the benefits, challenges, and possibilities of participatory budgeting. PB has been practiced in Toronto since 2001 through Toronto Community Housing, and more recently through City and school pilot processes. The panelists discussed how PB […]
Shaping Democracy through Teamwork
Passionate about amplifying the voice of Greensboro residents, Maddie Reed and Fanta Dorley from Greensboro, NC helped engage many people from all walks of life to improve their community. PB Greensboro launched as the first PB process in the south last year, August 2015, and has since become an engaging outlet for people to have […]
