Youth-Powered, Local Expert-Driven Engagement: Designing the Southwest DC Community Center

We are creating an initiative to empower local youth as Civic Fellows to interview neighbors and to support focus group facilitation with neighbors sharing their lived experiences as Community Experts, enabling the SWDCCC to gather feedback from the neighborhood to inform the design and operation of the new community center. This engagement process will be a key feature of our longer-term efforts to build a community center that can achieve the vision of the SWDCCC, which is to serve as a vibrant, central hub for the community to support lifelong learning, arts, cultural enrichment, and community life. While the developer is providing this space rent-free for 30 years and providing funds for the build out, the SWDCCC is charged with determining its design, programming its activities, and funding its operations so there is ample opportunity for the community to shape its future.

By providing training opportunities and compensating local youth to lead in-depth interviews and assist with facilitating a diverse range of focus groups, we hope to cultivate a sense of ownership and stewardship in our Civic Fellows that instills a sense of pride, fosters a sense of community, and spurs a longer-term interest in civic involvement. By compensating interviewees and focus group participants as Community Experts, we hope to gather insights that might not typically emerge from more traditional forms of public engagement and ensure that the future SWDCCC reflects the needs of all our neighbors, particularly those with needs not met by other services in the community.

• Now through mid-June
  • Continue promotion and outreach activities through the strong network of civic organizations and schools that support our community
  • Develop training content for the Civic Fellows and coordinate with local organizations to explore collaboration opportunities
• Mid-May
  • Open the application process for Civic Fellows
  • Begin seeking focus group volunteers

• Mid-June
  • Close crowdfunding campaign
  • Close Civic Fellow application process
  • Select participants
• July
  • Conduct kick-off event with Civic Fellows
  • Host trainings
  • Civic Fellows will complete interviews
  • Civic Fellows will support meeting facilitation with focus groups
• August
  • Civic Fellows will continue to support meeting facilitation with focus groups
  • Civic Fellows will submit final projects
• September
  • Share engagement results
  • Post final projects

The rich context and complex history of our community cannot be captured in a paragraph or on a page, but at its heart, our neighborhood has been shaped by a diverse community contrasted with discriminatory and destructive urban renewal policies, past public participation processes that have excluded marginalized groups, and most recently efforts to bring development in the form of new restaurants, storefronts, and entertainment venues. While this development has generated opportunities, it has also generated questions and concerns. We cannot foster an engagement process without recognizing the rapid changes - and challenges - that are facing our community.

In particular, in conversations with partner organizations we've heard that our youth are eager to have more meaningful ways to be involved in their community. We believe this initiative may present an opportunity for youth to learn and connect while planting seeds for them to grow into civic leaders and community creators.

Ultimately, it is with the understanding that we are building on our dynamic past for a more promising future that we will undertake these engagement efforts and invite our community to participate, particularly our neighbors of traditionally marginalized groups. It will not be perfect, it will not be easy, but it will be with a recognition that every voice has value and with an appreciation of the wide range of viewpoints that are informed by diverse lived experiences. By engaging with empathy and connecting across differences, we hope to build a community center that is reflective of both our unique characteristics and our shared humanity.