Elevating Equity in Virtual Community Engagement

We need community-based organizations to be equal partners in public engagement work. They remain the closest to those we must involve, and likely have the best solutions to offer. Engaging them in a new equitable online future also helps to ensure that leaders in these communities are receiving the training, resources, and tech tools they
need to thrive in their own broader work whether that is helping to provide food, shelter, legal aid, health care, arts and culture, or job training. But how do we translate this to a COVID19 engagement world? After numerous conversations with a variety of clients, I find that the answer is simple. We need to take the same equitable engagement steps whether we are meeting in person or virtually.

Engage Local. Putting Community at the Center of Public Engagement

Equitable community engagement recognizes local residents and community-based organizations as assets that can be resourced to play an active partnership role in designing solutions for their communities. Public agencies are advancing this work through adopting equitable engagement principles, creating Equitable Engagement Blueprint documents, and even more importantly committing public funds and redesigning how engagement contracts are being written, how staff are being trained, and how local organizations are being compensated for their time and partnership. MZ Strategies showcases some of these efforts in a new white paper released by SPARCC.

Lighting a SPARCC to fight Displacement

Sharing musings on a new initiative MZ Strategies, LLC is proud to be a part of working with an amazing group of partners to launch the Strong Prosperous and Resilient Communities Challenge (SPARCC). SPARCC is designed to support local cross-sector collaboratives working in six regions to develop policies and projects that advance racial equity, climate and public health goals. These six regions – Memphis, Atlanta, Denver, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the San Francisco Bay Area – each have created their own visions for how community-led investment can create stronger neighborhoods that intentionally work to stem displacement and create shared prosperity for existing and future residents and entrepreneurs. Additional thoughts on gentrification, including reading recommendations.