Strategic Action Planning

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Description of the Work
Planning Meetings: Scroll down

Workshop 1: a participatory strategic planning forum focusing on the identification of needs and priorities with plans of action.

Workshop 2: to identity allocation of (money and other) resources to make it happen.

Blank Financial Planning Form
BLANK Financial Planning form for WGs

Work Group Instructions
If you are in a Work Group, please contact the WG to find out if there's already a Point of Contact for your WG. If not, please tell your WG about this effort.

If you are already the Point of Contact for your WG, please PLEASE READ the info below, look at this [Participatory Budgeting Workshop presentation], send back the above form or email the info. And then COME TO THE MEETING! Seeya there!

Filled Out Forms to See Examples
[List of Filled Out Forms]

[Summary of Numbers So Far]

Contact Info
mailto:ob-finance@lists.mayfirst.org

Background Info About Participatory Budgeting
[BOSTON: Participatory Budgeting Workshop presentation],

[NEW YORK: Participatory Budgeting Meeting: Brooklyn Review]

[Josh Lerner ParticipatoryBudgeting.org The New School for Social Research - PPT Presentation by the PROPOSED FACILITATOR FOR BOSTON]

[Lecture: Beyond Elections Documentary Part 2 (Participatory Budgeting I)]

[Article: Chicago’s $1.3 Million Experiment in Democracy]

[Article: Government can't solve budget battles? Let citizens do it]

Meeting Info
2nd Meeting, 2/10, noon, private residence.

Write to FAWG for instructions on how to get to the residence and how to participate: ob-finance@lists.mayfirst.org, or call 978 808 7173.

NO BUDGET DECISIONS about budget allocation will be made at this next meeting.

It's an event planning meeting for the workshops. The workshops will be where decisions will START to be made. Final decisions will be made at GA.

If you're a Working Group that's going to want OB money in the next 6 months, make sure to fill out your planning form (link above) and submit it. The earlier the better, if you're planning on spending more than $1,000, so we can see how much fundraising needs to occur to meet our goals.

DO NOT ASSUME YOU WILL HAVE MONEY TO SPEND. There's a spending freeze right now, while we figure out our goals. The spending freeze was "enacted" when the FAWG gave its presentation to GA at the end of Jnauary.

BUT while no decisions are to be made at these planning meetings, participating in the budgeting process (and/or following the minutes) will help you understand how to get your Working Group's goals "heard and understood" by the larger OB GA so that it can be decided if spending the money is a priority or not.



1st Meeting 2/10, noon Diesel Cafe DAVIS Square 257 Elm Street, Sommerville, MA http://diesel-cafe.com/



Invitation to participate in preparatory meetings on Participatory Budgeting and to attend an agenda brainstorming meeting with Professor Green (Visiting Scholar at North Eastern Law School, Rights Based Approach practitioner).

I sent this announcement to individuals who represent a diverse number of working groups. We are presently building synergy between working groups so that FAWG is not the only driving force behind the participatory budgeting initiative (re:  conversation at FAWG yesterday with Rene).

This will allow for full participation and greater support. I think it is important that we move ahead slowly to build success and allow for representation in the preparatory meetings of OB's diverse population! This would necessitate pushing back the date of our workshop. I don't think that there would be enough time in between otherwise.

We see the first workshop as a participatory strategic planning forum focusing on the identification of needs and priorities with plans of action. The second will be to identity allocation of resources to make it happen. Afterwards monitoring and evaluation to measure the success in meeting agreed upon strategic goals and allocations.

Please see attached [power point] for an introduction to the methodology! This was presented at the GA along with FAWG's 2011 financials.

For more detail...Please read: Participatory budgets: a tool for a participatory democracy  http://nccr-ns.epfl.ch/autres_rech/UrbaNews/Urbanews7/UrbaNews_7_en.pdf

Participatory budgeting is direct democracy. These are revolutionary ways to make governments (and movements) more accountable to the people!

Thanks,

Rita

I will send along more readings as I find them.

-- Rita Monestersky- Sebastian Brandeis, MA SID' 2009



Occupy Boston Participatory Budget Creation Form 2 January 2012

This is another form offered as a tool that WG’s might want to use as they engage with the participatory budget process. The time allocations are arbitrary and appear only to illustrate a set of possibilities. Use what you like and leave the rest.

1. How/why did this WG start? (10 mins) What has it done since it started? (10 mins) Who is part of it now and what do each one of us bring to the table in terms of aspirations and skill-sets?(15 mins - or 2 mins per person)

2. If we could have the world the way we want it or as we see it needs to be, in terms of the focus of this WG, what would it look like in 10 years? ( 2 mins per person) In 5 years? ( 2 mins per person) In one year? (4 mins per person)

3. What elements of our vision for one year from now can we agree on?( 15 mins)

4. What steps can we, as this WG, take to create that vision in the coming 12 months? (15 mins) Which of those steps do we want to commit to taking? (20 mins)

5. What resources are needed to take those steps? (15 mins) Put those on the budget worksheet to bring to The OB Participatory Budget Summit.

6. How can we as a WG help to get the resources we will need for the coming year? (15 mins) Put that on the budget worksheet too. I just roughed this out (and totally pulled the time allocations out of the air) so it doesn't have to be what we use, but I think something comparable, where a kind of agenda or process is offered for how to approach the budget created, is crucial, should be included and walked through as part of the power point and printed on sheets for folks to take away.

In presenting this, it is important to stress the importance of getting through all the steps and so moving briskly through them so as not to get bogged down. If it would be helpful, FAWG members and perhaps members of Facilitation WG will be available to help facilitate WG's with this or another process of their choosing.