The following is a message from the City of Portland’s Office of Community and Civic Life:

Dear Portland Friends, Colleagues & Community Organizations,

The last time the City of Portland created a fresh community engagement framework was 1974. Nearly 50 years later, Portland’s population has doubled and faces livability, safety, and affordability concerns.

The Office of Community & Civic Life’s Portland Engagement Project (PEP) is the opportunity for all Portlanders to help evolve our city’s engagement model to solve issues today and into the future.

The first step of this project is listening—YOU are the most valuable part of this project, and we want to hear your ideas!

From now until April 30, our independent consultant Pregame is hosting virtual listening sessions across Portland to hear from as many Portlanders as we can. If you are unable to make a listening session, you can host your own with our DIY Kit or complete an online survey (find out more below).

In closing, I would like to extend a big thank you to all of the district offices who contributed to designing this listening project with Pregame. We hope to see you at a listening session!

Kind Regards, 
T.J. McHugh, Acting Director of Office of Community & Civic Life

Share your ideas through the online survey!

The survey takes less than five minutes to complete, and your response is anonymous. All the ideas gathered will be compiled after the survey closes on April 30, and then a report will be available to the public through Civic Life in July. Take the survey here!

What is the Portland Engagement Project? 

The Portland Engagement Project brings the City, community-based organizations, neighborhood associations, and individual Portlanders together to build proactive engagement structures in order to reduce social vulnerability and livability issues, restore trust, and support our communities to thrive.

There are five main components of PEP that will help the City design an equitable engagement model to address civic issues and build stronger relationships with the community. This process brings together best practices from engagement experts and community leaders, dedicated City engagement staff, and robust demographic data from the 2020 Census and other sources to build a better system for all Portlanders.

We hope you will join us in building and engagement model that works to solve issues today and into the future!

For more information about the Portland Engagement Project, please visit the City’s website: www.portland.gov/civic/portland-engagement-project.