If you were given $1 million to improve the health and wellness of the people in your neighborhood, how would you spend it?
That question was asked over the summer of residents in nine neighborhoods in Providence as part of a pilot project funded by the R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services and the R.I. Department of Health aimed at reducing health inequities in those neighborhoods.
The so-called “participatory budgeting” initiative allowed community members, some as young as 13, to vote on how to spend the money in their neighborhoods, without city and state elected officials having a say.
The project is closely tied to another RIDOH program called Health Equity Zones, a “place-based approach” bringing community members together to make systemic changes at the local level to improve health outcomes.
Over two years, $900,000 in state Medicaid funds will be split between two Health Equity Zones, one of which is called the Central Providence Opportunities, which is overseen by the nonprofit ONE Neighborhood Builders. The zone covers the neighborhoods of Smith Hill, Federal Hill, Silver Lake, Olneyville, Hartford, Manton, Mount Pleasant, Elmhurst and Valley.
The other zone is the Pawtucket Central Falls Health Equity Zone, backed by the nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corp.
While each zone was allocated $450,000, the Central Providence Opportunities HEZ has raised an additional $550,000 in private grant funding.
How to spend the $1 million? That’s where participatory budgeting comes in.
Following a structured process, residents in each community had the opportunity to work together to identify needs, generate ideas on how to meet them and then vote directly on how to spend public funds.
“It was about creating health equity, to try and improve community health in unique ways,” said Anusha Venkataraman, managing director of Central Providence Opportunities. “It was a community-driven process from beginning to end.”
Well ahead of the final vote in June, delegates were tapped to create a to-do list and schedule, and contact city officials and local organizations. Committees were formed and public meetings held. Ideas ranged from addressing serious health concerns such as toxins in drinking water to more aesthetic concerns such as the landscaping of local parks.
“The people at the table developing those projects were those who know about the challenges in those communities and know what will work,” Venkataraman said.
A similar process took place in the health equity zone in Pawtucket and Central Falls.
When the votes were tallied in Providence, 728 residents chose to use $368,000 to install two new composting toilets at Merino Park in the Hartford neighborhood, increase access to bathrooms in Donigian Park in Olneyville and Davis Park in Valley, and fund the planting of native shrubs.
Another 703 residents voted to use $330,000 to provide all households with lead pipes in the nine neighborhoods with a National Sanitation Foundation-certified water filter.
About $132,000 will be allocated to make improvements to bus stops, and about $50,000 will be used for a peer mental health training program for high school students.
This type of participatory budgeting has been done before in Rhode Island, such as when the Central Falls School District received $100,000 in federal money two years ago and students and parents voted on what to do with the money.
But the state initiative involving the two health equity zones is by far the largest participatory budgeting program in Rhode Island so far.
Wole Akinbi, who was raised in Smith Hill, says he learned a lot from the process. He served on the Nine Neighborhood Fund Steering Committee, which hosted meetings with community partners and residents to collect ideas about how to use the $1 million.
“I wasn’t even aware there were machines you could put in parks to improve the air quality,” he said. “Or how expensive it was to filter water in a household. This process enlightened me to that.”
Studies show improvements selected by the community promote healthy behaviors, creating a positive and self-perpetuating cycle – things Rhode Island’s underserved communities need.
Akinbi says the choice to allow all teenagers to vote was purposeful, opening the door to youth engagement. The voting was partly done with voting machines loaned by the R.I. Office of the Secretary of State.
“Now they are familiar with what voting looks like,” he said. “They need to know that being involved in these types of things is empowering.”
In that way, organizers say the participatory budgeting initative was a success. It increased community input and engagement and got youngsters familiar with the voting process.
In Pawtucket and Central Falls, the participatory budgeting program resulted in more than 800 residents voting in favor of installing a new sprinkler water park in Pawtucket and a fitness park in Central Falls for $288,000 and paying $97,000 for a multimedia campaign to end the stigma of mental health issues.
Venkataraman says they are now in the implementation phase and will be releasing requests for proposals for the approved projects in the coming weeks.
“This will help implement the projects and come up with evaluation metrics to gauge success,” she said. “It’s a really vibrant demonstration of how people can be more involved in public budgeting processes.”
How about fixing the sidewalks so folks don’t trip and break their necks.