Things bloom best when people get their hands dirty.
Many hands make the community bloom. S an editor CC BY-SA 3.0
I’ve been thinking about civic engagement for the last couple of weeks.
In mid August, my colleague Eric Johnson and I were down in beautiful San Benito County to meet with Leslie David, the Executive Director of Benitolink, a local nonprofit newsroom which covers the county.
Eric and I have been considering the future of California Local, and exploring the option of changing it from a for-profit to a nonprofit corporation. Leslie generously gave us a meeting (and took us out to lunch!) to share her experience running a nonprofit newsroom and provide some insight into the funding environment for local news.
Shortly into our discussion, she made a blunt and direct statement—something to the effect of: ”The original journalism and news aggregation on California Local are well and good, but that’s not what interests me. What sets you apart is that you are a civic engagement hub.”
It was a clarity-inducing moment for me. We started California Local with the explicit aim of enabling civic engagement—our motto is “We make it easy to citizen.”
But when describing what we do or what we are to other people, none of our descriptions nailed it down so concisely as “California Local is a civic engagement hub.”
‘Citizen’ is a Verb. (So is ‘Garden.’)
Civic engagement is what Baratunde Thurston is talking about when he says “citizen is a verb” and broadly defined, means active participation in community life.
This extends beyond community governance, though voting, running for office and serving on commissions and committees is vital. It also extends beyond the community service provided by local nonprofit organizations, staff, donors and volunteers.
It’s individuals taking personal responsibility to make their community better.
I can think of no better example of this in action than … gardeners.
Eric lives in Sacramento, a few blocks from McKinley Park, with its beautiful volunteer-maintained rose garden, which we’ve often walked through when I visit. Once, when we were walking to a neighborhood breakfast place, a woman came out of her house with a watering can, said hello, and walked out to the median in the middle of the street to water some flowers planted there, probably by her.
A quiet, not often discussed fact of life is that many, perhaps most, public gardens are planted and tended by volunteers from the community.
At California Local, we’ve concentrated on providing information about and fostering connections with local government agencies and nonprofit groups working to maintain and improve community life.
Moving forward as a community engagement hub, we’re going to expand our focus to also celebrate the individuals quietly watering the flowers, putting Free Little Libraries in their front yards, and in so many other ways contributing to the health, happiness and joy of community life.
