Civic engagement or civil participation is any individual or group activity undertaken with a view to advocating on behalf of the public. Citizens acting alone or together to protect public values ​​or making changes or differences in society are a common type of civic engagement. Civic engagement includes communities working together in both political and non-political action. The goal of civil engagement is to address public issues and promote community quality.
Video Civic engagement
Form
Civil engagement can take many forms - from individual volunteerism, community involvement, organizational engagement and government work such as participation in elections. This involvement may include directly addressing issues through private, community-based, or employment through representative democratic institutions. Many individuals feel the personal responsibility to be actively involved as a sense of responsibility towards their community. "Youth civic engagement" has a common goal to develop a community environment and foster relations, although youth civil involvement places an emphasis on youth empowerment.
A study published by the Information Center & amp; Research on Civil & amp; Involvement at Tufts University divides civil involvement into three categories: citizenship, elections, and political voices. Online scholars of youth involvement have called for a broader interpretation of civic engagement that focuses on the goals behind existing institutions and activities and includes emerging institutions and activities that achieve the same goals. This civic engagement researcher suggests that the reduction of community life into a small set of exploratory electoral behavior may not be sufficient enough to describe the full spectrum of public involvement in civilian life.
Citizenship reform appeared in the early 21st century after Robert Putnam's provocative book Bowling Alone showed a change in the pattern of community participation. Putnam argued that despite the rapid increase in higher education opportunities that could encourage civic engagement, Americans abandoned political and organized society. Numerous studies show that while more youth are volunteers, fewer choose or become politically involved.
Maps Civic engagement
The role of volunteerism in changing government
The 2015 World Volunteer Report, the first global review of volunteer voting power to help improve the way people are organized, refers to evidence from diverse countries such as Brazil, Kenya, Lebanon and Bangladesh. The UN report shows how ordinary people are giving up their time, effort, and skills to improve the way they are organized and involved at the local, national and global levels. Better governance at every level is a prerequisite for the success of a new set of targets for future international development, the Goal of Sustainable Development, agreed upon by the United Nations in September 2015.
At a global level, for example, diverse groups of 37 online volunteers from around the world are involved in 4 intense months of cooperation with the United Nations Department of Economic Affairs (UN DESA) to process 386 research surveys conducted in 193 United Nations Member States for Survey E -Government UN 2014. The diversity of languages ​​and languages ​​of online volunteers - more than 65 languages, 15 nationalities, half of them from developing countries - reflect the survey mission perfectly.
Benefits
Civic engagement can encourage community participation and government involvement.
According to ICMA: Leaders in a Better Core Community, this is a benefit of civic engagement:
- Reach larger buy-in against decisions with fewer counterattacks such as lawsuits, special elections, or board recall.
- Bringing trust between citizens and government, which improves public behavior in board meetings.
- Get successful results on toxic problems, which help elected officials avoid choosing between unattractive solutions.
- Develop ideas and solutions that are better and more creative.
- Apply ideas, programs, and policies faster and easier. â € <â € <
- Creating involved citizens instead of demanding customers.
- Build community within the city.
- Make your job easier and more fulfilling.
Local civic engagement
When those who serve listen to the people, they become more knowledgeable about what the community needs and generally make better decisions. Miriam Porter stated that elected officials should communicate with their citizens to have a better understanding, "Without this, turmoil, suspicion, and a reduction in public trust occur."
Voluntary personal time for community projects is widely believed to support the growth of the community as a whole. Community involvement can be found in: Food pantries, community cleanup programs and the like can increase efforts to create strong community ties.
Community collaboration
Community collaboration encompasses democratic spaces where people are open to discussing concerns for specific issues of public interest and the means to make the necessary changes. These spaces are often resource centers, such as neighborhood associations or school boards where citizens can obtain information about the community (upcoming changes, proposed solutions to existing problems, etc.). Colleges and universities also offer more opportunities and expect more students to engage in community volunteer work.
According to a case study conducted at a US college in September 2014, there are important leadership qualities that contribute to the development of civic engagement. The study mentions three main themes: active, adaptive and resilient leadership, learning for leadership and engagement for the greater good as the main reason for the success of The Democracy Commitment (TDC) in college. TDC is a national initiative that aims to help US colleges educate their students for democracy.
Political participation is another key element practiced with order. Involvement in public board meeting sessions for discussions informs citizens of the needs and changes that need to be made. Gathering sounds based on information at the local level, can change many things that affect everyday life.
Online engagement gives citizens the opportunity to engage in their local government that they will have nothing else, by letting them voice themselves out of the comfort of their own homes. Online involvement involves things like online voting forums and public discussions that give citizens the opportunity to voice their opinions on the topic and offer solutions and find others with similar interests and create the possibility of forming advocacy groups related to particular interests. The use of the internet has enabled people to have easy access to information and has resulted in better public information as well as creating a sense of new community for the citizens.
In the state government role
Civic engagement has interrelated relationships in various state entities. Through the people's values, knowledge, freedom, skills, ideas, attitudes and beliefs, civic engagement fosters and shapes the state to be a very broad representation of cultural, social, and economic identity.
Civic engagement applied within the state is impossible without local civilian involvement. As in a democratic society, citizens are the source to give life to representative democracy. The application of this principle can be found in the programs and laws that it claims to have applied based on various regional issues for the country. Health, education, equality, immigration are some examples of entities that civilian involvement can form within a country.
Apps in health
The state is implementing public health programs to better benefit the needs of the community. The State Child Health Insurance (SCHIP) program, for example, is the largest public investment in child health care that helps more than 11 million uninsured children in the United States. "This nationwide health insurance program for low-income children is associated with increased access, utilization, and quality of care, demonstrating that SCHIP has the potential to improve health care for low-income American children". The states take part in the program and sculpt it to better suit the demographic needs of the state, making their health care and the engagement process of the individual individuals who participate in the program also helps reform and improve it apart from the country's identity.
Compared to other countries
Countries that practice public involvement and implement public health programs to benefit the needs of the community are concepts shared by other countries, such as the UK. A study conducted by the Department of Primary Care, Liverpool University, Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Department of Geography and Geology, McMaster Institute of Environment and Health, McMaster University, Avon Health Authority, School of Journalism, Tom Hopkinson Center for Media Research, Media and Cultural Studies , University of Cardiff, and Department of Clinical and Biostatistics Epidemiology, Center for Health Economics and Policy Analysis, McMaster University stated that "There are a number of impulses towards public participation in health care decision making including instrumentalists, communitarian, educative and expressive impulses and a desire to increase accountability".
Their research includes a critical examination of the extent of community involvement in health care decision making. It is suggested that "public participation in decision-making can promote goals, bind individuals or groups together, instill a sense of competence and responsibility and help express political or civilian identity". The actions of citizens whose purpose is to influence the decisions of state representatives ultimately affect the country as a whole. Voting is a key component in civic engagement for the voice of the masses to be heard.
Importance of voter participation
The goal of the state government in elections is to promote civic engagement. Director of Regina Lawrence of Annette Strauss Institute for Civic Life states "Politics and all other forms of engagement are really about trying to make your community, your country, and your nation a better place to live." Voter Turnout ensures civic engagement between countries with incentives that promise organizations of volunteer, charity, and political engagement with everyone in the community who will have a voice to be heard.
Countries can help promote civic engagement by ensuring fair electoral and redistricting processes; by building partnerships between government agencies, non-profit organizations, and civilians; and by maintaining a network of information about volunteers and charity opportunities.
One of the main factors determining civic engagement among the people is the number of voters. Voter participation measures the level of political involvement of citizens, an important component of civic engagement - and a precondition for maintaining public accountability.
High voter participation example
- The state can help promote civic engagement by ensuring a fair electoral and redistricting process; by building partnerships between government agencies, non-profit organizations, and civilians; and by maintaining a network of information about voluntary and charitable opportunities.
- Access to information about government activities, decision making, soliciting and using public input, and encouraging public employees to contribute and serve.
Low voter participation example
- Low participation with politics in state and local government can lead to less public involvement such as lack of funding and leadership directed at community involvement issues.
In the marginal community
According to Merriam-Webster, marginalized is defined as "to place or keep (someone) in a position of helplessness or insignificance in society or group". In diverse communities, it is felt that awareness and participation according to a study, use three different types of community services for interaction between diverse individuals and understand their respective perspectives and improve relationships within the community. In addition, specifically the Black Youth, there is a fundamental gap of early citizenship education where there is a shortage and where it thrives. According to Hope and Jagers, they studied civic engagement among Black youth using data obtained from the Youth Cultural Survey of the Black Young Project. The assumption is that black youth who experience racial discrimination are encouraged to be conscious and participate in politics.
Another study by Chan explains the influence of development associations and environmental factors among a group of risky youths such as African-American and Latino participants from low-income families living in urban environments. Their research produces variations according to their participants when minority racial youth are motivated and aspire to ideals for their future because of early participation in civil engagement activities, but there is not enough evidence that this type of mindset will follow them into adulthood they. Seeing other oppressed groups, Latinos, according to this report in the New York Times, states between 2000 and 2012 the number of Hispanics eligible to vote increased to an estimated 10 million, but there is a lack of taking an active approach to trade with issues such as immigration and causing an uproar in the Latin community. Hispanic demography becomes a potential influence of power in political polls. To expand other oppressed groups are immigrant parents and their children in Jensen's study of their concentration in Asia and Latin America. In their study, they sampled small groups from metropolitan areas, the difference between the two generations varied because children who attended high school were 87.5% declared to be civilians. As for their parents are not involved in civil issues but developing "cultural awareness" such as sending money back to their home country and these participants see it as their duty in the circumstances of their current opportunity to engage civilians.
Technology
Civic engagement, interpersonal trust, and television use - Social capital has declined over the years and Putnam sees why this is happening. One area of ​​study covered is television and its impact on social and civic engagement. Shah writes that Putnam finds more and more people watching TV, the less they are active in outside activities. This is demonstrated by the advent of TV in the 60s and the fall of civic engagement. They found that although news and educational programs can really help in the knowledge of the citizens, but lack of involvement in outside activities and social events hurts public involvement in general.
Today, the internet has become a major social media outlet. Xenos and Moy find that the internet does help the community's involvement but also provides "unjustified euphoria, sudden and equally unwarranted skepticism, and the gradual realization that web-based human interaction really has a unique and politically significant nature ". We have all the information we want and the candidates at our fingertips, and the wealth of information creates a more informed body. But with this comes misinformation and both collide and do the opposite, creating the public with contradictory opinions.
The Knight Foundation outlines four different ways technology can help in civil engagement. Four different ways include improving and providing electronic services, making information more transparent, enabling e-democracy, and the services they call joint production. E-services will enable digital technology to improve the efficiency of urban services within the city. This will enable the service to be more effective and give way to the public to engage. E-Democracy and Joint Production will work by allowing citizens to shape public policy by allowing them to take part in actions through technology. The Knight Foundation claims technology can make information more transparent, allowing the public to access information and engage.
There are countries, such as Romania, where new technologies are beginning to affect civic participation, in recent years. New media became a factor of increasing civil mobilization for the new generation. A new study on that, at the Center for Society and Democracy Participation from SNSPA, Romania. The Center for Civic Participation and Democracy (CPD) is a unit of research, analysis, and evaluation of citizen participation in democratic processes, both at the national and European levels. Created at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration, CPD brings together experts in such fields as Political Science, Sociology, Administrative Sciences, Communication, International Relations and European Studies and it is doubtful the role and status of SNSPA School of governance . Run by Remus Pricopie and Dan Sultanescu.
The role of higher education
It can be said that the fundamental step in creating a functioning society begins with the education of the citizenship of children in society. According to Diann Cameron Kelly, "When our young people serve their communities through volunteerism, political participation or through vocal activism, they are more likely to emerge... choose and serve all aspects of society". Kelly argues that children should be taught how their community works and who chooses the rules we live even before they go to school. Another voice maintains that civic education is a lifelong process, even for those who make decisions on behalf of the citizens they serve.
To address this challenge, merging service-learning into college course design has gained acceptance as a pedagogy that links curricular content with civic education. In a recent study, students who participated in service learning even once seemed to have made a profit in knowledge and commitment to civic engagement when compared to non-service learners. Campus Compact, a coalition of nearly 1200 college presidents (in 2013) promotes the development of citizenship skills by creating community partnerships and providing resources to train faculty to integrate community and community-based learning into the curriculum. Built on the acceptance of service learning and community involvement in higher education, the Carnegie Foundation for Advancement in Teaching created the Political Involvement Project in 2003 to develop the political knowledge and skills of college students. The American Democracy Project (ADP) was launched in the same year by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). The American Democracy Project joins the American Democratic Commitment, a community college partnership, to sponsor an annual national conference focusing on the role of higher education in preparing the next generation of knowledgeable and engaged societies. The American Democracy Project also sponsors campus-based initiatives including voter registration, curriculum revision projects, and special days of action and reflection, such as MLK Day of Service. In a report entitled, A Crucible Moment: Higher Education and Democratic Education released in 2012 by the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement, a joint project of the US Department of Education and the American Association of Colleges and Universities, the authors argue that higher education must function as intellectual incubator and socially responsible partner in promoting civic learning and democratic engagement.
The report recommends four basic steps to building a civil-minded institution:
- Growing the ethos of citizenship across the campus culture.
- Making literacy citizenship is the ultimate hope for all students.
- Conduct citizenship inquiries in all areas of study.
- Increase citizenship action through transformative partnerships.
This higher education-based initiative seeks to build students, politically involved identities while increasing the capacity to evaluate the political landscape and make decisions about participation in our democracy. As evidenced by coalition growth, professional development opportunities and civic education research, higher education institutions and associate partners are committed to helping prepare the next generation of nations to become "Place Officials" tomorrow.
Many universities, such as the University of Minnesota, have begun to focus on increasing the civil involvement of students and have mandated that educators begin to incorporate it into some school activities. Edwin Fogelman, author of Civil Involvement at the University of Minnesota, stated that genuine civic engagement can only be done by those living in Democracy. According to Fogelman, civic engagement is largely shaped by schools. Educational institutions have the skills to develop "civil competence, critical thinking, and public spirit, which empowers citizens to be involved". Many claim that civic engagement should be part of the curriculum and that higher education institutions should provide opportunities to become involved such as apprenticeships, learning services, and community-based activities. The institute also needs to provide outlets where students can openly discuss concerns and controversial issues.
Some schools such as Widener University, have made civilian involvement the primary goal of the university. The university seeks to get students involved in local communities to become more conscious and civically involved. (Civil Engagement And Service Learning At Metropolitan University: A Various Approaches And Perspectives).
civic learning
In January 2012, the US Department of Education issued a roadmap and call to action entitled Promote Civic Learning and Involvement in Democracy which offers nine steps to increase the Ministry of Education's commitment to learning and citizen engagement in democracy.
These steps include:
- Organize and catalyze schools and post-secondary institutions to improve and improve the learning and involvement of high-quality citizens
- Identify additional citizenship indicators.
- Identify promising practices in civic learning and democratic engagement - and encourage further research to learn what works.
- Take advantage of federal investment and public-private partnerships.
- Encourage community-based work-study placements.
- Encouraging career public services among students and graduates.
- Support civic learning for a comprehensive K-12 curriculum.
- Historically Involve, Black Colleges and Universities and Other Minority Agencies - including Hispanic Presentation Institutions, Participants Servicing Institutions in American and Native American Islands, and Colleges and Tribal Universities - in a national dialogue to identify best practice.
- Highlight and promote student and family participation in educational and federal programs and education policies at the federal and local levels. "
See also
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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