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Talk about METS in Kansas City has nothing to do with baseball and everything to do with setting up home runs for the future. The issue is improving education in Math, Engineering, Technology and Science (METS), essential for many good jobs as well as the health of the economy. Many parents and students, as reported on in Public Agenda's study "Important, but Not For Me," don't see METS as having much to do with their own lives. Leaders in the Kansas City area, with the help of our Public Engagement group, are working to change that. Click here to learn more, including how to begin dialogue on problems in your own community.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT AT PUBLIC AGENDA
While always adapted to the task at hand, our work in public engagement revolves around three fundamental and interrelated practices:
Learn more about Public Agenda's core approach to engaging the public.
Explore our other tools for public engagement.
Read brief descriptions of selected recent initiatives and what they accomplished.
CENTER FOR ADVANCES IN PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
The Center for Advances in Public Engagement was launched in an effort to engage citizens more fully in public life. CAPE aims to take a leading role in a field dedicated to promoting new and better ways for citizens to confront pressing public problems, and to close the gap between leaders, experts and the general public in the search for solutions. It is dedicated to re-engaging the larger public on important public matters, to create the possibility for dialogue that gets beneath the "snapshot" or "knee-jerk" views of public sentiment.
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT IN ACTION
At Public Agenda, public engagement isn't just a theory - it's what we do. Here are some links to learn more about some of the fieldwork our engagers are doing right now:
Achieving The Dream: Community Colleges Count
Involving Faculty and Students in Creating a Culture of Success
Community Action & Engagement for Student Success
Regional METS Leadership Coalition
One KC Voice
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT NEWS
How to get beyond the verbal battles, vicious polarizations and deadlocks that so often prevent useful dialogue on real solutions to public policy issues? Public Agenda's Will Friedman tackles the challenge in a CUNY TV interview.
THE ENGAGERS: FAVORITE LINKS
Our public engagement team, which works to help citizens, lawmakers and public officials get into real dialogue to achieve real solutions to public policy problems, is smart - very smart. But they're also very well-informed. Here are a few of their favorite sources for finding out the latest on the art, science and achievements in the field of public engagement:
Deliberative Democracy ConsortiumDemocracySpace.org
International Association for Public Participation (IAP2)
Journal of Public Deliberation
Journal of Public Deliberation Practitioners Site
Kettering Foundation
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
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