Date: Friday, November 16, 2007
Time: 9am to 4pm
Location: Worcester, MA
Cost: $25
Click here for more details (including full agenda)

According to the national Civic Health Index, which measures civic participation along forty indicators, the United States has been on the decline for the past thirty years. This decline was found for most indicators; including our trust in one another and in major institutions, and in our connections to community. Our own home state of Massachusetts ranks 34^th in the nation for volunteerism and 16^th in the nation for voter participation. When civic involvement erodes, the health of our democracy and the civic welfare of its citizens are weakened. Long term quality life in a community is affected. Ultimately, Massachusetts’ economic social vitality is at stake. Finding ways to improve the civic engagement and trust is critical to the longer term health of the Massachusetts economy, democracy, and families.

Granted this blurb leads potentially to a headier discussion regarding the decline of civic engagement. More specifically regarding this particular sentence, ” …this decline was found for most indicators; including our trust in one another and in major institutions, and in our connections to community.”

However, for the sake of time and the original intention of this post I’ll leave it as mere context for the purpose of the upcoming summit, but will revisit soon as it begs a second look and aligns all too well with the Hub2 initiative.

But I digress, here is some more information about the summit via commonimpact.org:

The purpose of the Massachusetts Civic Engagement Summit is to raise awareness about the importance of civic involvement among government, business and community leaders, and engage them in finding effective ways to work together. The Summit will focus on major civic engagement sectors including volunteerism, neighborhoods and networks, civic education, and electoral politics and policy.

The Summit will highlight and uncover the range and scope of existing activities and infrastructure. It will serve as a platform to showcase best practices and models of innovation among corporations, government, community, education, and non-profit organizations. It will also afford participants the opportunity to engage in cross cutting discussions on topics ranging from evaluation, professional development, changing demographics and more. The Summit will end with a call to action for increased collaboration among civic leaders to address pressing needs of the community.

The Massachusetts Engagement Summit sounds like a worthwhile opportunity to learn more about the civic engagement crisis as it pertains to Massachusetts as well as to interact with those directly effected by the decline. I’ll be attending and will be sure to share my observations (and notes following the summit). I strongly encourage anyone interested in civic engagement (or not so interested, but intrigued) to attend.