Empowering People through Civic Engagement and Dialog

Service learning links
Communications for a Sustainable Future (CSF), University of Colorado, click here
National Service Learning Clearinghouse, click here
UCLA Higher Education Service Learning Clearinghouse, click here

The Help Your Community web site has a searchable database of community-based organizations and coalitions engaged in grassroots level outreach. You can locate organizations in your area through a zip code search.

Advancing Environmental Justice through Community-Based Participatory Research
A special issue of the NIEHS journal titled "Environmental Health Perspectives." Examines how exposures and environmental health issues impact disproportionately on vulnerable populations, and suggests how community intervention can increase awareness of environmental health hazards. (EHP Supplement, Volume 110 (Supplement 2) April 2002).

Participatory Development Virtual Resource Center
The VRC is a user-friendly consolidated body of current resources for practitioners, project officers, program managers and policy makers to draw upon in order to enhance their understanding and practice of participation. The Virtual Resource Centre is a compilation of electronic postings authored by PD Forum members and PD colleagues all over the world. Postings to the VRC capture what works, what doesn’t, and why in the field of participatory development. It is intended to be an informal and up-to-date forum for you to document and discuss participatory projects and experiences with participatory methodologies.

On-line Digital Democracy Group, Centre for Computational Geography
Developing web-based Geographical Information Systems for Public Participation in environmental decision making.

Partnerships and Participation in Planning!
The site includes an introduction to partnerships and participation and a history of citizen involvement in public decision making. Other areas of the site provide information on participation tools and techniques, demonstrated in specific planning cases. Finally, the site offers an opportunity for users to test their understanding of collaboration in planning through some simulations and scenarios.

WORKSHOP ON ACCESS TO GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION AND PARTICIPATORY APPROACHES USING GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

Public Participation Visualization: Conceptual and Applied Research Issues

Empowerment, Marginalization And Public Participation GIS
GIS is alternatively seen as a powerful tool for empowering communities or as an invasive technology that advantages some people and organizations while marginalizing others. This is a critical issue which divides both academicians and thoughtful critics of society. "GIS and Society" is therefore one of the top GIS research issues facing this country, as determined by UCGIS, the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science.

Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation
This Web site discusses empowerment evaluation. It includes a detailed list of Internet resources, software, handbooks and guides, and information about the Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment section of the American Evaluation Association.

The CyberHood, sponsored by the Urban Affairs Association (UAA) and the Center for Urban Studies, Department of Planning, University at Buffalo. The CyberHood is based on the belief that many students, scholars, practitioners and activists of color are isolated from one another and from progressive whites, who are also concerned about the plight of communities of color, conditions in the inner city, and the problems of low-wage white workers. The goal is to make the CyberHood a place where students, scholars, practitioners, and activists from across the racial and class divide can find one another and build meaningful relationships. The building of such connections, we believe, will strengthen the struggle to understand and transform inner cities and the metropolitan regions of which they are a part.

The Coalition for Low Income Community Development
The Coalition for Low Income Community Development (CLICD) is a coalition of grassroots and national groups organized to ensure that low-income people benefit from community planning and development programs. CLICD provides training for local groups in HUD's Community 2020 mapping software, including technical skills as well as how mapping can fit within the context of housing and community development work.

TELESIS Quality of Life Web Site allows you to explore: "How can I get involved in my community?" You click on the region nearest you (the site has an interactive map of San Diego County) for a starting point on community involvement.

Public Interest Research
Site discusses public interest research, including citizen science, civic science, engaged research, action research, public scholarship and other types of research that aim to directly benefit and involve members of public, non-academic communities. PIR has been defined as research that aims at developing knowledge and/or technology that increases the commonwealth. PIR requires synthesizing insights from different ways of knowing, and the involvement of an active citizenry in the research design, process, analysis and/or communication. The Student Public Interest Network (SPIN) encourages students and advisors to integrate public interest research into undergraduate and graduate studies.