CEO at Davis Pier / Vice Chair, Board of Directors at Kids Help Phone / Advising on social innovation, government transformation, behavioural science, and evidence-based policy
At Davis Pier Consulting, we prioritize community and civic engagement in our work. It's the best way to solve tough government and public policy issues. Doing work like this is tough, though - it's tough to find people to participate when you're focused on getting diverse voices, it's tough to convince people in a busy world to add one more thing to do, it's tough to run a process that gathers valuable information given a multitude of constraints, it's tough to genuinely make people feel they were heard, and it's tough to close the loop with participants demonstrating how their feedback was used. But community and civic engagement is critical to driving impact through better public services. So I think about it a lot. Civic engagement comes in lots of forms - town halls, surveys, watching City Council, or even just reading the news on issues of significance. One of the easiest, yet most important, ways to participate is to vote. It decides who will ultimately be involved in making huge decisions that impact us all. And that is why I was so surprised to find out recently that in our last municipal election in Halifax, voter turn out was just less than 40% (and under 39% for Toronto's recent Mayoral by-election by the way). Not even half of the residents of these great cities exercised this very fundamental right of democratic participation. Municipal elections in Nova Scotia happen this October. For those of you in Nova Scotia, make sure to VOTE. The least you can do is a minimal amount of reading on the candidates for Mayor and your Councillor and VOTE. And while you're at it, convince two or three friends to do the same. At Davis Pier, we're doing everything we can to include more people in the process of government. Please do this one thing - decide who you'd like to vote for and make a plan (online or in-person) to get out and do it. Here's more information on Halifax's upcoming election: https://lnkd.in/ekBwXs65 https://lnkd.in/exbtDNVq If you live somewhere else, this information is still easy to find (I used Google!).
Augy Jones
3mo
Yes sir 👏🏾
Passionate and spot-on Mike. Wise words as always!
It's great to see such a strong focus on community and civic engagement. You're absolutely right—getting people involved in the democratic process is crucial for impactful public services. The statistics on voter turnout are eye-opening, and it's encouraging to see your call to action. What strategies have you found effective in motivating others to engage?