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Problems and Purpose
The problem included downward trends in many social indicators, especially for youth. The solution has been to maximize citizens' involvement in several government functions, from policing to schooling to the rewriting of the city charter. Citizens' skills are deliberately built. E.g., Hampton has a whole system for educating youth for civic work, which includes community service projects, advisory councils in each school, advisory panels for the mayor and police chief, a budget for grants allocated by youth, and paid positions for urban planners who are teenagers. To assist adult citizens in working across lines of race, the city has a series of courses called "Diversity College."
History
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Originating Entities and Funding
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Participant Selection and Recruitment
The initiative was open to all citizens with the total number of participants recorded at around 140,000. Special attention was payed to youth participation and to African American/White relations.
Methods and Tools Used
Various channels of engagement have been set up including neighborhood planning groups, deliberative forums, charrettes, service projects, small grants made by citizens to citizens, etc.
Deliberations, Decisions, and Public Interaction
The structure includes the following collaborating entities in the city government: Hampton Neighborhood Office, Hampton Youth Commission; paid youth planners in the Planning Department; Principals' Advisory Groups in each high school; and a Superintendent's Youth Advisory Group. In addition, the structure includes such local nonprofits as Youth Achieving Change Together and Alternatives, Inc., which advocate for and support deliberative participation in city government.
The project is robust, continuing civic participation.
Influence, Outcomes and Effects
The process resulted in a policy or political decision. It generated some large official changes, such as a new charter and new city plan. More importantly, it built a culture in which constructive engagement is expected. The new charter was built into most aspects of city government (both planning and administration), including at least the police, school system, parks, and zoning.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
Specific Effort Made to Include Disadvantaged Groups
Extensive effort to address disadvantaged groups
There is an integrated structure with many points of entry: neighborhood planning groups, deliberative forums, charrettes, service projects, small grants made by citizens to citizens, etc. Hampton has made the best efforts I know to engage all youth, including those not academically successful
Specific Effort Made to Strengthen Democratic Capacities
Processes have been made more participatory, but there has also been a serious investment in citizens' skills (without which processes tend to fail.)
Secondary Sources and External Links
Carmen Sirianni and Diana Marginean Schor, & "City Government as an Enabler of Youth Civic Engagement: Policy Design and Implications," in James Youniss and Peter Levine, eds., Engaging Young People in Civic Life (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999).
Andrea Batista Schlesinger, "The Power of "Why?" Students in Hampton, Virginia, and Brooklyn, New York, Learn that Asking Questions is More Powerful than Memorizing Answers"; YES! Magazine, September 9, 2009.
William R. Potapchuk, Cindy Carlson, and Joan Kennedy, "Growing Governance Deliberatively: Lessons and Inspiration from Hampton, Virginia,"; in John Gastil and Peter Levine, The Deliberative Democracy Handbook: Strategies for Effective Civic Engagement in the Twenty-First Century, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.
Carmen Sirianni, "Youth Civic Engagement in Hampton, Virginia." in Sirianni, Investing in Democracy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2009), pp. 117-154
Note
The original version of this case study first appeared on Vitalizing Democracy in 2010 and was a finalist for the 2011 Reinhard Mohn Prize. It was originally submitted by Peter Levine.