Participatory Budgeting

a partnership with the University of Miami

Participatory Budgeting

a partnership with the University of Miami

What is Participatory Budgeting?

Participatory budgeting is an activity whereby community members meet to discuss the need for funds to address local issues, debate solutions and establish priorities, propose budgets to fund these correctives, and offer formal budgetary plans to city or county officials.

Source: Participatory Budgeting Project

Nature of the Project

The Miami Community Participatory Budgeting Project is a community-based strategy, which means that emphasis is placed on local insights and encouraging community input into the city or county budgeting process. The central charge of this project is to train local persons to engage productively with the city or county to obtain funds to support local projects and, in turn, educate other community members about the participatory budgeting process.

Project Members

The trainers are John Murphy, Scot Evans, Miguel Minutti-Meza, Francisco Delgado, Roger Horne, James Brazil, and Mars Fernández-Burgos. The initial class of community trainees consisted of twelve persons: Lindsay Cain, Joanne Davidson, Anthony Green, Michael Harris, Coretta Hudson, Catanya Jackson, Shanta Maraj, David Michael, Rodrigo Richardson, Ingrid Robinson, Jacqueline St. Jacques, and Samantha Ternelus.

Training Series

Participatory budgeting training series presentations by University of Miami's interdisciplinary PB team:

• session 1

• session 2

• session 3

• session 4

• session 5

• session 6

Civics 305 by Engage Miami

Presentation about civic engagement in the local Miami context (PDF)

Participatory Budgeting Project in NYC

Video introducing the Participatory Budgeting Project in New York City (Vimeo link)

Other Organizations

• The Participatory Budgeting Project, Brooklyn

• PB Chicago

• Participatory Budgeting Oregon

• User Participation, Europe

• Participatory Budgeting World Atlas

• The International Observatory on Participatory Democracy (OIDP)

• The North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO)

Reading List

Dive deeper into articles, reports, and books about participatory budgeting:

• Media articles from around the web (PDF).

• Academic journal articles, reports, and books: starting list (PDF)

• Academic journal articles, reports, and books: full list (PDF)

• Academic journal articles, reports, and books: full list, annotated (PDF)