Civic Participation Action Plan

Citizens at a community meeting "Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen."
Peter Marshall

One of the key factors in building a community action plan is to get the community behind the plan. It takes lots of work, but can be very rewarding. This section will provide you with some ideas about getting people together and getting things done! Topics include recycling, environmental justice, partnership building, and volunteer monitoring.

Policy and Planning Tools

Check out the Civic Practices Network as a first step.

The Healthy Communities Program focuses on improving community health.
American Civic Forum promotes the concept of civic environmentalism.
The National Civic League advocates a new civic agenda.
Putting the People into Planning: A Primer on Public Participation in Planning published.
The Pomegranate Center helps citizens solve problems in a way that embraces the unique values of the community.

Regulatory Tools

The Environmental Justice division of the EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance (OECA) .

Technical Tools

Community Boards is a neighborhood-based conflict resolution program.
Community Networks describes how to create computer networks that can invigorate a community.
The Green Map System which helps local teams as they design and produce their own community's Green Map of environmentally significant places.
The Good Neighbor Project promotes sustainable industries and good relations with communities.
For information on volunteer water quality monitoring, check out EPA's Volunteer Monitoring website.
The State of Kentucky provides a listing of on-line resources for volunteer monitoring groups.
And for an exciting example of what can be done on the Web, check out the Los Angeles River virtual tour.
Nebraska's community forestry home page has lots of links and tips on tree planting and maintenance.
The Environmental Justice Resource Center "seeks to assist, support, train, and educate people of color, professionals, and grassroots community leaders with the goal of facilitating their inclusion into the mainstream of environmental decision making."
Second Nature is a nonprofit organization working to help colleges and universities expand their efforts to make environmentally sustainable and just action a foundation of learning.

Financial Tools

EPA's Environmental Justice's (OEJ) Small Grants Program [PDF, 65 pp., 249KB]
Ithaca HOURs On-Line: A town that prints its own money which can only be used locally - a bartering tool.

Other Tools

The Contact Center Network provides a directory of thousands of nonprofit organizations.
Common Enterprise describes the progress of four Democracy Roundtables.
Native Americans and the Environment focuses on the roles of Native Americans concerning environmental justice both in the past and present.
The Car-Sharing Network
The Co-Housing Networkattempts to overcome the alienation of modern sub-divisions.

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You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, available as a free download, to view some of the files on this page. See EPA's PDF page to learn more about PDF, and for a link to the free Acrobat Reader.