The voting has ended.
Welcome to the Healthy Places GSD Participatory Budgeting ballot! On this website, you can familiarize yourself with this year’s projects and the digital ballot and place your vote for which projects will ultimately be allocated a total of $5000 to support health equity at the GSD!
Voting is happening until November 26th!
The PB Steering Committee will be doing in-person outreach at:
Beer n' Dogs, Friday, November 22nd (6:30 - 8:30 p.m.) - Chauhaus
GSD Thanksgiving, Monday, November 25th (6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.) - Piper
Who can vote? Anyone who is part of the GSD community is welcome to cast a vote! That means students, staff and faculty - really, anyone with a GSD email address. We ask that you give us your email when you begin the voting process so we can make sure to eliminate duplicate votes, but our vote analysis system anonymizes each ballot, and emails will only be used to communicate results of voting in early December.
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Why are we doing this? And what do we mean when we say health equity?
The Healthy Places Student Group has $5,000 to support projects that improve health and create health equity at the GSD. When we say health and health equity, we don't have one clear definition - we are purposefully leaving things broad. But, we firmly believe that issues of health go beyond physical health - they are inextricably linked to social and environmental issues. And, considering who has access to health services and healthy spaces/food/environments is vital - health is related to issues of fairness and justice. So, with that framing, we (Healthy Places PB) ask - what do we need to do to make Gund and the GSD healthier? And, in a place like Harvard, where we are surrounded by money but rarely given opportunities to decide how it is spent, how can we work to democratize the functioning of the school? We received 12 amazing project submissions (3 of which were already funded by Building and Student Services!) and the remaining 9 are listed on this ballot for the entire GSD community to vote on! So, THANK YOU for voting! Results will be announced in early December.
PROJECTS ALREADY FUNDED BY BUILDING AND STUDENT SERVICES AS A RESULT OF THIS PROCESS:
1) Outreach for the GSD Mental Health Survey
2) Moving the ID Card Readers from the outside doors on Quincy and Cambridge Streets to the inside doors, so people can warm up as they dig out their cards.
3) Painting the lines on the basketball court
Want to learn more about the process overall? Visit our website to see the RFP used to collect projects and more about the Healthy Places Design Lab and Student Group.
*We are very grateful to the Stanford Crowdsourced Democracy Team, who created this platform for participatory budgeting projects around the world!