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—Thoughts and scribbles.

How to Conduct Equitable Community Engagement

Equitable community engagement for strategic planning, program design, and process improvement is a key factor of success. Diverse perspectives from the communities who use a program or process will help to create a solution that works and meets user needs. Conducting equitable community engagement is easier said than done, however. Here are a few tips to ensure you’re reaching all of your communities in your solution design.

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Meet your Consultants

I got started in local government with the Syracuse Innovation Team and genuinely had no idea just how much I would fall in love with the work we did. I quickly realized that local government is where the action really happens. We worked on everything from improving road quality to predicting water main breaks, increasing rental housing safety, reducing housing instability, and making it easier for small businesses to get registered in the city.

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Bringing Stability to Renters in Syracuse: Connecting Residents to Resources

This post is the third in a series of three about the Innovation Team’s housing stability initiatives. To read the first two posts, go here.

A little over a year ago, we asked for your input on what our next priority area should be. After six weeks of public engagement, nearly 900 votes from residents, and input from the Common Council, the Mayor chose Housing Stability as our next challenge to tackle. Last month, the City of Syracuse launched 11 new housing stability initiatives to improve housing and reduce transiency for our residents…

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Bringing Stability to Renters in Syracuse: Reducing Evictions

This post is the second in a series of three about the Innovation Team’s housing stability initiatives. To read the first post, go here.

A little over a year ago, we asked for your input on what our next priority area should be. After six weeks of public engagement, nearly 900 votes from residents, and input from the Common Council, the Mayor chose Housing Stability as our next challenge to tackle. Last month, the City of Syracuse launched 11 new housing stability initiatives to improve housing and reduce transiency for our residents…

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Bringing Stability To Renters In Syracuse: Improving Housing Quality

This post is the first in a series of three about the Innovation Team’s housing stability initiatives.

A little over a year ago, we asked for your input on what our next priority area should be. After six weeks of public engagement, nearly 900 votes from residents, and input from the Common Council, the Mayor chose Housing Stability as our next challenge to tackle. Last month, the City of Syracuse launched 11 new housing stability initiatives to improve housing and reduce transiency for our residents…

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Housing and Economic Opportunity

This post was originally published on Innovate Syracuse on June 8, 2017.

Driving through many of Syracuse’s neighborhoods today, one can’t help but notice the boarded up vacant houses, trash-strewn vacant lots, crumbling porches, and chipping paint. One might ask, how did this happen? How did we get here? And, what impact does neighborhood blight have on the city and its residents? What are the consequences to living in unstable and unsafe housing? And how does it affect our residents’ access to opportunity?…

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The Aftermath: Our Role Post Election 2016

As communicators, we must tell stories. 

Happy or not with the outcome, this election exposed and reinforced stark divides in our country. Negativity and hate have run rampant from coast to coast. Our country has some serious reflection and work to do. And we must keep moving forward. 

 

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Samantha LinnettComment
Crisis Communications: Gov. of Indiana ABC News Interview

It is likely by now that everyone has heard of the religious freedom bill that Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana (R) signed into law last week. This decision has received huge amounts of backlash from both in the state and outside of it and absolutely is a crisis in itself. However, what I want to look at is the ABC News television interview that Gov. Pence gave on the issue on March 29 that certainly did not help the situation.

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Research Matters

An Evidence Based approach using research and insights is crucial to the success and effectiveness of any public relations or communications campaign. Without doing research, you cannot know who your main publics and target audiences are, what messages will potentially resonate with them the best, or be able to measure the results of the campaign in an effective way. As Guy Golan, a professor of practice in the S.I. Newhouse School’s public relations and public diplomacy departments, always says, “Without research, you’re just guessing.”

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Samantha LinnettComment
Syracuse University's Bad PR

As a student at Syracuse University, I have had the opportunity to witness up close some of the things that have given the school some not-so-good press these past two semesters. It seems that as soon as one issue dies down, another pops up to refuel the conversation, and the university has done a less-than-stellar job handling these issues from a public relations point-of-view.

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Samantha LinnettComment