Haynes Foundation Awards $100,000 to UC Irvine College of Social Ecology to Amplify UCI-OC Ballot

Irvine, CA, June 29, 2024 –(PR.com)– The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation has awarded UC Irvine’s College of Social Ecology a $100,000 grant to explore embedding its UCI-OC Ballotextra within the space.

The ballot, launched last year, affords real gaze files on the issues confronting Orange County residents. It also brings commercial leaders alongside with elected officers and neighborhood members to focus on workable responses to key issues that can affect future investment, commercial project and neighborhood operations within the county.

“Orange County is one amongst the six most populous counties within the nation,” says Jon Gould, dean of the College of Social Ecology who spearheaded the ballot. “If it were a city it might possibly possibly per chance per chance be the third largest within the nation. Also, Orange County is one amongst the few in fact crimson counties in The US – a space the put the left and appropriate no longer completely reside facet-by-facet nonetheless must salvage a draw to collaborate to procure issues performed. Because the county has grown, its leaders need real how one can track and analyze residents’ concerns, views, and priorities on a diversity of pressing issues so as that we’re no longer forced to rely on anecdotal understandings or the feedback from the handful of residents who show up for city council conferences.”

That’s why the college launched the UCI-OC Ballot, and the Haynes grant will allow it to magnify.

To this point, the college has equipped three devices of polls. The first surveyed Orange County residents on homelessness and affordable housing. In collaboration with the Orange County United Scheme, the College equipped the findings to an target market of extra than 200 leaders from nonprofit organizations and businesses and elected officers. Those in attendance participated in discussions to collectively map out seemingly solutions to homelessness and affordable housing.

The second and third releases, “Pink County, Blue County, Orange County” and “Orange County as Bellwether?” respectively, centered on Orange County residents’ views on politics and the upcoming presidential election.

The following pollwill focal point on “brain drain” in Orange County. Because the pollcontinues, College leaders envision exploring such issues as different transportation, intolerance/abominate crime, sustainability and felony justice, among varied issues.

The UCI-OC Ballotintention, Gould explains, is to position the muse for convening elected representatives and commercial and neighborhood leaders to focus on the findings and launch to map out responses in Orange County.

“It’s usually a stretch to claim that The US is threatened by a breakdown in democratic norms — from the rising inability of dueling partisans to work collectively, to even public inequity over what constitutes info,” he notes. “On the different hand, Orange County affords a skill opportunity to bridge these divides. Orange County represents a laboratory the put the left and appropriate no longer completely reside alongside one but one more nonetheless also must salvage some plot to collaborate to bound the county and address challenges that threaten the usual of existence. Amongst these issues are homelessness, affordable housing, resident relocation, climate switch and sustainability. These issues require collective enter from coverage makers, elected officers, provider suppliers and neighborhood members. Getting these stakeholders collectively and dealing within the identical route is a key ingredient to wholesome civic existence – and also an example for the comfort of the nation as many completely different communities wrestle with the pain of bridging divides.”