Community Leadership Project

The UVM/Burlington COPC is working to strengthen community leadership skills and opportunities among residents and among local community and nonprofit organizations. Compared with other cities, Burlington residents are unusually active in community decision-making through a series of both grassroots and civic groups. At the same time, some individuals and groups of people feel underrepresented in these organizations and committees. Some feel that their opinions do not have enough influence; and some worry that the citizen commissions, boards, and committees fail to communicate and coordinate effectively with one another so that they can’t be as productive as they want to be.

The UVM/Burlington COPC Community Leadership Project talked with residents and organization leaders to answer questions such as:

• How would you like to be involved in influencing your community
• What sorts of community skills and experiences would better prepare you to get involved?
• What incentives encourage you to become active in your community?
• What obstacles get in the way of your involvement in community decision-making?
• How has the quality of life in your neighborhood been affected by involvement with grassroots and city-government-related organizations?
• What sorts of resources would be useful for supporting more broad-based community decision-making?
• How could the structure and settings of community decision-making change to help you play a role?

As the UVM/Burlington COPC collects and summarizes residents’ answers to these questions the results are being used to create, implement, and evaluate ways to build broad-based community participation and leadership. The UVM/Burlington COPC is:

• Identifying strategies that community and nonprofit organizations can use to communicate and coordinate more effectively;
• Identifying workshops, training, and other community opportunities that strengthen residents’ ability to be effective citizen participants;
• Designing techniques for assuring that diverse individuals have opportunities to voice their views and have an influence in community decision-making;
• Developing strategies for increasing collaborations between UVM, City government, and residents for sharing information and resources, including student involvement in the community.

This project has completed: a brochure that summarizes local workshops and training opportunities that are related to developing skills for community involvement. It has also analyzed surveys and interviews of residents regarding: (1) forms of community involvement and incentives and barriers to participation and (2) the ways in which community organizations have affected neighborhood quality of life and can be strengthened even further.

For more information, contact:
Yiota Ahladas, Project co-facilitator
Community Economic and Development Office, City Hall
(802) 865-7168
Yahladas@cedoburlington.org

Lynne Bond, Project co-facilitator
UVM Psychology Department, John Dewey Hall
(802) 656-1341
Lynne.bond@uvm.edu