The Humphrey Institute’s Center for Democracy and Citizenship collaborates with a variety of partners to promote and support active citizenship by people of all ages.
Minnesota Works Together
The Center for Democracy and Citizenship (CDC) is organizing networks of people and organizations around issues that are important to them, from veterans reintegration to health to education. Called Minnesota Works Together, this initiative is creating a common language and a sense of interconnection and larger possibility so that Minnesotans can move beyond the role of spectator or consumer to be architects of a democratic way of life.
Minnesota Works Together Campaigns
- The Warrior to Citizen Campaign brings together a diverse coalition of individuals, organizations, and communities to find ways to ease the transition of returning veterans to their role as citizen.
- A new public conversation on health- The Center for Democracy and Citizenship is partnering with ISAIAH and others to reframe the public conversation on health, health care and community.
- Citizen legislators – With coaching and mentoring by staff of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, a bipartisan coalition of Minnesota state legislators is thinking about their role as elected officials in a new, more public and engaged way.
- Citizen-centered democracy – The Center for Democracy and Citizenship is a key member in the national November 5th Coalition, which aims to turn the 2008 U.S. presidential election into deliberation and debate about how we can mobilize the energies and talents of the whole society to address our common challenges.
Our work in neighborhoods
- Civic Life in St. Paul – Minnesota Works Together assumes that a flourishing civic life requires a strong sense of place. The Center for Democracy and Citizenship's decade of work on the West Side of St. Paul is a foundation for revitalizing a civic culture in neighborhoods across the city. Other cities and institutions use the center's work in neighborhoods as an example of how to create cultures of civic learning and organizing.
- Hope Community – The Center for Democracy and Citizenship's Public Achievement model of student engagement is integrated with other organizing models at Hope Community to create public power spaces in one of Minneapolis’ most diverse and economically challenged neighborhoods.
- Cedar-Humphrey Action for Neighborhood Collaborative Engagement (CHANCE) – This student-led effort was born out of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship’s student engagement work. It challenges the University of Minnesota to deepen its relationship with the surrounding neighborhood by creating connections and promoting partnerships between University students and staff, and local businesses and neighborhood residents.
Student engagement
- College students play a key role in Minnesota Works Together campaigns and neighborhood work. Staff of the Center for Democracy and Citizenship teach courses in public work skills, mentor individual students, and provide resources to other educators who wish to incorporate public work into their curriculum.
Read more at our blog, By the People
Visit the Center for Democracy and Citizenship's web site at www.publicwork.org
Veterans and non-veterans have created the Warrior to Citizen challenge coin to recognize the service of veterans and ask them to serve again, in their communities.
Center for Democracy and Citizenship
Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota
301 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455
612-625-0142
612-625-3513 fax
cdc@umn.edu
