The Center provides civic engagement consulting services to public and private sector organizations and citizen groups within Hampton Roads.

Civic engagement practice is the design and implementation of a set of tools, techniques and practices that enable inclusion of citizens as deliberative participants in the design and implementation of public policy. Civic engagement differs from traditional public agency public participation practices – hearings and meetings. Beyond formal consultation on policy choices it involves active strategies facilitating the development of common ground among often competing interests held by citizens and interest groups.

Civic engagement practice includes both a design component and the direct provision of process services using both well-established and new tools and techniques. Examples of processes include study circles, roundtables, collaborative policymaking, consensus building, new forms of town meetings, citizen juries and assemblies, issue forums, focus groups, participatory budgeting, deliberative polling, choice work dialogues, cooperative management bodies, design charrettes, and other partnership arrangements.

The Center utilizes original survey research, structured data analysis, interactive mapping, on-line network creation, and web based technologies in its work. Additionally, as conflict over competing values and interests is part of any process dealing with public decisions, the Center will utilize existing community resources in conflict management, mediation and dispute resolution to assist its work.

The Center’s activities may be categorized as services for contract clients and as non-contracted activities supported by general-purpose grants/endowment (see #2 below for a description of non contracted services). As the Center’s mission is to enhance development of deliberative democracy in Hampton Roads, the Center’s direct clients will be established public and private sector organizations who directly form and implement public policy. Thus local, state and federal agencies in the region, and for profit and nonprofit organizations will contract with the Center to undertake civic engagement programs relevant to their operations.

Finally, the Center is undertaking applied research in the use of new technologies and practices in civic engagement, to serve as a regional and national clearinghouse for its clients’ own research in developing their capabilities in civic engagement.