Strap on your working boots and put on that thinking helmet, because Citizens Academy is launching the fourth session of its Civics Boot Camp.
Citizens Academy is a volunteer-led community start-up based in Ottawa that advocates for citizen involvement for a better city.
The city-funded program is a six-week crash course teaching municipal literacy to 40 participants. It uses a combination of in-person workshops and online learning to encourage constructive problem–solving between citizens and their city.
The boot camp is modeled after another program in Syracuse and New York.
“But it is not death by PowerPoint,” promises Catherine Laska, program manager of Citizens Academy of Ottawa. She says participants play games and try to have interactive fun with the learning.
But like a military boot camp, the program is an intense, whirlwind course. It is also an enormous commitment for participants, who may be active, working adults in the community or university students.
Participants are chosen to represent Ottawa’s age, gender, geographic, and ethno-cultural mix, but applicants are typically women under the age of 40 living in the downtown core.
One success story is the GottaGo! campaign. Founded in the first Civics Boot Camp session, that initiative’s goal is to create a network of safe, clean and accessible public toilets in Ottawa.
Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney is a strong supporter of the campaign.
Joan Kuyek is a lifelong activist, author, professor at Carleton University and one of the founders of GottaGo! Relatively new to the city, Kuyek participated in the first Civics Boot Camp because she wanted to gain an understanding of the municipality of Ottawa.
She says Citizens Academy provided her with invaluable contacts and real knowledge about how the city works, which helps her to better advocate for public toilets.
She has been working to bring clean and accessible toilets to places such as Dundonald Park.
“There are lots of people who make a lot of money in the city, who would like to see Ottawa filled with skyscrapers to make more money,” says Kuyek. She says that if communities want to start seeing beauty within it, they need to organize and work together.
“The city can be about more than just making money,” she says.