Mapping Biloxi

What are the strong points of your city when it comes to supporting young people with after-school and other programs to help them thrive as our next generation of citizens?

Head down to Biloxi, Mississippi, this summer and you'll find dozens of volunteers - students, parents and community leaders - involved in a unique way of answering this question, as part of the Mapping Assets For Biloxi's Youth project. At workshops (click here for the photos from this event) held last week with the assistance of Public Agenda's public engagement team, youths and adults met separately to start listing all of the programs and "assets" in the community - from parks and breakdancing groups to youth ministries, scholarships and summer camps - marking their positions on a map of this Gulf Coast city.

The project has its own web site and Twitter feed so people can report and describe the assets they've found, as well as comment and discuss things as they move forward. They'll reconvene in person on July 24th to see how many things they were able to find and start thinking about how to better coordinate Biloxi's strengths on behalf of children and teens. That's the goal of this initiative, which originated in a recommendation from a Community Conversation held last year with the help of Public Agenda's Center for the Advancement of Public Engagement (CAPE).

For more information on the difference public engagement can make in your own community, check out our primer, video, case studies, and the Public Engagement and CAPE sections of PublicAgenda.org. And for more on our work along the Gulf Coast, see "A Renewed Vision For A Renewed City."