From Citizen Engagement to Real Progress
An innovative way to build community in Lafayette, LA
If you knocked on the doors of each of your neighbours and asked for their ideas about how to improve their community, you’d have no shortage of complaints, suggestions, and potential projects. But turning all of those ideas into reality rarely happens. Citizens often voice their complaints and requests to their city councilor, and local residents associations can help amplify demands. Unfortunately, the pace of action is often very slow and limited.
The fine folks in Lafayette, LA are taking a completely different approach. The 24 Hour Citizen Project began in 2012 as a small crowdfunding website. They have been running annual events since 2016 that connect people with community-focused ideas with expertise and financial backers to make them happen. In their own words, “this is an event created for citizens to impact their community directly through the pursuit of citizen-led projects.”
What an incredible way to flip the script and overcome the usual barriers to progress. Citizens put their ideas forward, and the project brings in experts, local government staff and elected officials, and financial backers. The experts and government folks help to refine and ready the ideas, while financial backers provide funding to bring the ideas to life. These are small-scale projects in the $5,000 range, with individuals and businesses contributing as little as $1,500 each. Small means the projects are relatively simple and straightforward to implement, speeding things up and avoiding the obstacles that come with larger, complex initiatives.
While the impact of each project may also be relatively small, the cumulative impact of multiple projects over many years is powerful. To-date, 37 projects have been completed with $170k of funding. Here is a list of all the funded projects so far. It’s fascinating to see the variety and diversity of ideas, and how each one solves a specific problem or improves a specific element of the community.
Imagine if all communities could make this kind of progress, year after year. Like compounding interest, the aggregation of progress over time would be significant, while the small nature of each project makes them much more feasible and likely to avoid roadblocks and obstacles.
In addition to the intrinsic benefits of these improvement projects, this is also a great way to build community. Neighbours naturally get to know each other while working together to propose and implement improvements that benefit everyone. There’s nothing like working through different opinions on how and what should get done when it comes to bringing people together. A sense of shared purpose combined with personal and group incentives to make it all work.