2021 Participatory Budget Event

We invite you to join in for our Participatory Budgeting Exercise! Unlike this photo above of our last in person Participatory Budgeting Excercise, this one will be completely virutal!

Participatory budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which community members decide how to spend part of a public budget. It gives people real power over real money.

PB started in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989, as an anti-poverty measure that helped reduce child mortality by nearly 20%. Since then PB has spread to over 7,000 cities around the world, and has been used to decide budgets from states, counties, cities, housing authorities, schools, and other institutions.

The New York Times calls PB “revolutionary civics in action”—  it deepens democracy, builds stronger communities, and creates a more equitable distribution of public resources.

PB is an annual cycle of engagement that is integrated into a regular budgeting process. A typical PB process follows these steps, usually over the course of a year:

Our Staff and Board, will take the feedback we receive from this activity and determine which ideas we are able to implement and move forward for next year's budget.

We've taken information from past year's Participatory Budget Exercise's to allocate funds for the following:

Lex Draper, Membership & Resources Organizer

De'Angelus Garcia, Jr Communication Strategist

Both of these positions are examples of ways our Members felt Soulardarity's reach and efforts could be expanded in our to serving our mission and our growing community.

We would love to see you on Thursday, November 18, 2021 at 6:00pm to give input on how to best use funds within our budget for 2022!

Hope to see you there!