Residents can bolster your city's outreach efforts for the 2020 Census -- register for TODAY's webinar to find out how!
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Case Studies on Engagement from San José and Hamm, Germany
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Our two new case studies go behind the scenes in cities that qualified as finalists for the 2018 Engaged Cities Award. In San José, city staff worked with Mayor Sam Liccardo to create Unleash Your Geek, inviting residents to create solutions for problems related to graffiti and flooding. Hamm city staff engaged citizens to turn an abandoned mine into Lippepark, a park that has helped restore community pride in the city after the collapse of the coal industry.
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Working with Residents to Boost Resilience
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Through our Resilience AmeriCorps program, we worked with AmeriCorps VISTA members, city staff, and residents to help communities prepare for extreme weather. You can now learn about the impact of the work in all 10 cities.
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Engaged Cities Award Reviewer Q&As
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We are proud to have fourteen city-minded thinkers and leaders on our Engaged Cities Award review committee. Read our conversations with reviewers Cecilia Muñoz, Matt Leighninger, Peter Levine, Sara Mogulescu, and Jennifer Bradley to learn about their work, their views on empowering residents, and their beliefs on engaged cities.
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Where Are They Now? Cities of Service AmeriCorps VISTA Alumna Laura Jenkins
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Laura Jenkins served as a Cities of Service AmeriCorps VISTA member in Seattle, Washington, as part of our 2015-2018 Love Your Block program. After her service year ended, she was hired by the city to work in the Department of Neighborhoods as a Community Engagement Coordinator. Her connections to the communities she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA member are essential to her current role.
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Resources and Opportunities
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- Today, May 1, we will host a webinar on the upcoming census alongside partners from San José. Finding Your Messengers: Lessons on Census Field Recruitment from San José will address how residents can support city hall outreach efforts to ensure an accurate census count. We hope you tune in! Register here.
- The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) is accepting images of communities to be featured in their 2020 calendar. From now through June 21, members can submit images of their city or county to be featured in a colorful, 12-month calendar to be distributed at the 2019 ICMA Annual Conference. Learn more about the contest here.
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Love Your Block team members and Cities of Service staff meet in Gary.
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Where Was Cities of Service?
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- Our program team visited three of ten cities that won our Love Your Block competition in July 2018. In each city, they met with city staff, AmeriCorps VISTA members, and residents to learn more about revitalization projects happening through the program. Executive Director Myung J. Lee and Program Manager Rose Rodriguez traveled to Milwaukee, where they met with Mayor Tom Barrett. Senior Program Manager Rosalind Becker Erwin and AmeriCorps VISTA Leader Talia Ramella visited two Indiana cities: Gary and South Bend.
- City staff from Love Your Block cities Lancaster and Newark visited us! Lancaster AmeriCorps VISTA members Carl Patterson and Michael Prescott joined Director of Neighborhood Engagement Milzy Carrasco on an excursion to our New York office. They met with Nathaly Agosto Filión, Chief Sustainability Officer in Newark, to learn best practices and make a personal connection with another city. The trio also sat down with our program staff to review progress and plans for community solutions.
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In the News
- The Washington Post published a story on Huntington for its success in promoting healthier lifestyles among community members. The city's Healthy Huntington program helped to reduce the obesity rate among residents and earned the city a spot as an Engaged Cities Award finalist last spring.
- In 2018, Tulsa won the Engaged Cities Award for its Urban Data Pioneers Institute, which brought residents into city hall to boost capacity for data analysis. A recent feature by Curbed highlighted the program as an example of a powerful collaboration between city hall and engaged citizens.
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