Spotlight: Not just for governments
/Spotlight: Not just for governments
Digital participation platforms also are useful for organizations outside the government. The Let's Do It movement started as a day of volunteer action in which over 50,000 people came together to clean up their country. The movement grew and now millions of people participate in annual events around the world.
A highlight from World Cleanup Day 2020.
After years of consistent volunteer work to clean up their neighborhoods, participants started wondering why the communities were dirty to begin with. They began to focus on systemic change. Why wasn't garbage collection being managed appropriately? Which interest groups stood in the way of improvements? This new focus led to the development of a digital participation platform, CitizenOS. In contrast to a top-down approach, in which a government body engages the public, CitizenOS was built to organize and accelerate the work of social movements, locally and across countries.
Activists' use of CitizenOS to organize their work is just one example of civil society organizations leveraging digital participation platforms. Another example is the Jogye Order, a major Buddhist organization in South Korea, which used the DemosX platform to collaborate with people and build trust. Many different groups, institutions, and governments can benefit from inviting participation through digital platforms.