City of Cambridge Participatory Budgeting

After consulting with community outreach workers and families, the Public Health Department's Agenda for Children Literacy Initiative ordered 231 bilingual books in 11 languages with half of the Participatory Budgeting allocation for this winning project.

This batch of books includes stories in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Nepali, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu (all bilingual with English).

Budget Delegates and City staff met on Wednesday night to label all 231 books with Participatory Budgeting stickers (shown below), so community members will know how these books made it into homes and onto shelves.

The books will be distributed to families through workshops and programs for parents, home visits, festivals, and events such as tomorrow's Family Literacy Fun Day at City Hall.

The total allocation for this PB project was $7,000.  The Agenda for Children Literacy Initiative plans to collect feedback from families about which languages and books are most needed and most popular before ordering the second batch of books with the remaining funds.