Friends Presents at City Civics Day
Friends was proud to be a key presenter at the inaugural on November 4 hosted by the City of Chicago. With nine main workshops and panels, the free, day-long event focused on helping people explore how to effect positive change through public engagement.
Leading a session entitled How to Improve Chicago’s Rivers, Friends’ Becky Lyons, director of equity and engagement, and Annette Anderson, volunteer, events, and canoe program manager, shared Friends’ advocacy and stewardship efforts, from individual and community involvement to company and government policies and actions, that foster a blue-green corridor vision for the Chicago-Calumet River system. They also engaged participants in a discussion of the river system’s history, its challenges and opportunities, and ways to get involved in its protection.
According to a story about the event, Gabriela Jirasek, assistant commissioner of community and digital engagement at the city’s planning department, said: “We really leaned heavily on having community neighborhood organizations kind of serve as the spotlight, because they’re the folks who are really doing the work.”
Click about the event.
City Civics Day was held at the Epiphany Center for the Arts on the near West Side and presented by the Chicago Department of Planning and Development in collaboration with the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
