New Letter to Albany Residents
September 15, 2009
Dear Albany resident,
Since the completion of nearly 40 Voices to Vision sessions that took place in May and June, the Voices to Vision team has been analyzing and synthesizing the ideas and data collected from the more than 650 Albany residents who participated. This data represents a collection of individual opinions, as well as shared values.
While we were extremely pleased to have exceeded our goals for participation, we had hoped for greater representation of Albany’s diverse communities. To broaden the range of voices, we will reach out to the city’s Chinese and Spanish speaking communities over the next month and will host community sessions in these languages. We offered sessions facilitated in Spanish and Chinese in May and June, but without targeted outreach in these languages, there was minimal participation.
The sessions to be facilitated in Spanish and Chinese will be identical to those held in May and June. Data gathered from these new sessions will be combined with the existing data prior to the launch of Phase Two of Voices to Vision. By gathering opinions from these communities, we hope to ensure that the broadest possible range of Albany residents’ voices are considered.
In the spring, we also made numerous efforts to include the voices of Albany youth, but were constantly competing with school schedules, sports, and the busy lives of Albany’s middle and high school age students. That said, the response of those youth who did participate was very positive. At this juncture, we are working to engage more young people so that we can incorporate their perspectives into subsequent phases and reports.
The next round of citywide participatory sessions (Phase Two), will be held in January and open to all Albany residents – regardless of whether or not they attended Phase One. These January sessions will review the collective waterfront scenarios that emerged from the summer sessions.
In the meantime, please visit the Voices to Vision website (www.voicestovision.com) where you can find answers to “In the Box” questions, photos from the sessions, general information about the Albany waterfront. In October, the Voices to Vision website will host a 15-minute questionnaire that will provide additional information for the design of the Phase Two sessions. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at info@voicestovision.com or 510.444.4567
Thank you,
The Voices to Vision team