We are very proud to be part of the team whose work on PBNYC was named winner of the Roy and Lila Ash Innovations Award for Public Engagement in Government!

The award recognizes the incredible work undertaken by our partners at Community Voices Heard and other community organizations who made sure that residents in NYC were at the heart of the process. We worked with the New York City Council to develop a community-focused process and now, in collaboration with these partners, we will use the $100,000 prize to make PB better in NYC and spread the innovative work that started in PBNYC!

“When leaders invest power in their communities, everyone wins,” said Josh Lerner, Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project. “Participatory budgeting brings new voices into civic life, and PBNYC shows that more voices lead to better decisions and stronger communities. As we bring participatory budgeting to new budgets across North America, PBNYC serves as a shining model and a laboratory of experimentation for deepening democracy.”

Read more about the prize, the results and the other winners from San Francisco in the full press release from the Ash Center at Harvard.