15 Years: Lesson 3: Trust is Key
In 2025, Long Beach, California, announced the third year of its citywide youth-run PB process. In this interview, we discuss the history of participatory budgeting in the second largest city in Los Angeles County and how relationships of trust – between elected officials, residents, and activists – have been crucial to its success.
15 Years: Lesson 2: If you can spend it, you can (and should!) do PB with it
There were, and still are, plenty of reasons to focus PB on capital funds and projects. But other budgets and types of projects are important, too. More and more, we are seeing municipalities (and schools) fund program and service projects in particular through PB. If you can spend it, you can do PB with it.
15 Years: Lesson 1: School PB is an Onramp to Civic Education
School Participatory Budgeting is an innovative and highly malleable civic learning process designed to build student agency, collaboration, and critical thinking skills while creating equitable opportunities for students to participate in authentic, impactful decision-making opportunities within their school communities and prepare for civic life.
Introducing a New Series – 15 Years: Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going
We are excited to debut a new multimedia series sharing lessons on practicing PB from our staff, board, practitioners, and field of participants that we believe are important to reflect on now.
