Our September 17, 2002 Dialogue in East Providence attracted a wide spectrum of interested and talkative citizens, ranging from fifth graders to high school students to senior residents. Many thanks to Alicia Antone, Assistant Library Director of Community Services for the East Providence Public Library system, for her assistance in announcing the program and providing refreshments.
Dialogue participants said that East Providence is a good small city to live in—as one of the youngest speakers said, "You bump into people you know around town." Even though everyone referred to "Center City," the group had a hard time describing "downtown" because Routes 195, 44, and 6 slice through East Providence. Folks identified their "communities" as centered around their homes and the local schools, library branches, and stores in their neighborhoods, including Phillipsdale, Rumford, Middle City, Kent Heights, Narragansett Terrace, Riverside, Bullocks Point, Crescent Park, and others.
Some people raised concerns about the city's social and economic health. They mentioned the decreasing amount of affordable housing for the city's variety of income levels. Several questioned the sense of spending taxpayer dollars on yet another study about developing the river and port areas when previous studies had shown it was both environmentally infeasible and economically impractical. Some people felt city politics seem to discount citizen input. For instance, several participants expressed the opinion that the new Senior Center campus could have incorporated more community needs than it does but that citizens' questions and suggestions about this were not heeded.
As for East Providence's younger residents, they said that their schools and the libraries, recreation fields, and parks are logical meeting places but only during limited use times or in, the case of the outdoor sites, in good weather. Some at the Dialogue wondered why the city doesn’t provide a clean, safe meeting and recreation center appropriate to youths' interests and activities. When the Dialogue ended, this topic was gathering considerable momentum as a possible element in East Providence's $1000 Fund for Community Engagement project.
RICH originally set December 5 as the follow-up meeting date, when Drake Patten would help shape East Providence’s humanities-based, publicly accessible FCE project. The Senior Center generously offered us space and we were looking forward to meeting there, but a snowstorm that day caused us to move the date up to early in the new year. Thanks to e-mail and "snail mail," however, we are keeping in touch with this interesting and active group.
|
| Fund
for Community Engagement After each of Rhode Island's 39 cities and towns participates in the Dialogues Program, The Rhode Island Council for the Humanities (RICH) offers it a one-time Fund for Community Engagement (FCE) award of up to $1,000. The Fund for Community Engagement grant gives each community an opportunity to address--through a public humanities project--issues raised during the Dialogue meeting. Please use the highlighted link here to access the guidelines for Fund for Community Engagement grants. |