Participatory Budgeting Project

In a state as large as New York, a steady stream of smart, innovative work is coming from NYHealth grantees and non-grantees alike that is relevant to NYHealth’s priority areas of Building Healthy Communities and Empowering Health Care Consumers and its focus area on Veterans’ Health. These organizations should be elevating their work and informing key stakeholders at regional, statewide, and national conferences, meetings, and other convenings. Yet, because of a lack of resources, they are often unable to do so. To address this issue, NYHealth is awarding grants through its Sponsoring Conference Participation in Support of Healthy Communities, Consumer Empowerment, and Veterans’ Health Request for Proposals (RFP). Through this RFP, NYHealth is sponsoring low-resource organizations to attend and present at local, State, and national conferences related to these areas. In 2019, NYHealth awarded the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) a grant to participate in this initative as part of its efforts to build healthy communities.

Under this grant, PBP sent a staff member to the 2019 People’s Action Convention, where PBP was invited to present to nationally prominent elected officials and leading community organizations about its emerging initiative, Democracy Beyond Elections. Presenting at the conference gave PBP a significant opportunity to raise the profile of participatory democracy practices as key determinants of equitable health outcomes, with a focus on how the practice of participatory budgeting has reached major scale in New York City. By presenting to and networking with nationally prominent officials, PBP had the opportunity to learn from their interests and motivations, and better strategize how to best promote participatory democracy practices to elected officials.

View a complete list of conference participation grantees