Over the past few weeks, Knowledge As Power has been busy hosting civic skills trainings for a variety of communities and organizations including Neighborhood House, Yesler Terrace Community Council, City Year, Home School High School Group, Jackson Park, Seattle Community Bloggers, and Seattle Housing Authority.

We’ve worked with a diverse bunch, and have had translators in Somali, Vietnamese, and Spanish at our trainings.  Concerns ranged from education and housing redevelopment to LGBT rights and the environment. For some, this was a great opportunity to practice letter writing and emailing.  For others, it was a real eye opener, and many seemed to change their ideas about legislators having interest in their concerns.

Overall, these trainings have been a big success, and have sparked lots of great discussion.  They’ve given us a chance to hear what kinds of concerns citizens have about the legislative process, and we’ve been able to help them engage more effectively in this process and get their voices heard by lawmakers.  We’re looking forward to more trainings in 2012!

Interested in hosting Civic Skills Training?  Sign up below!

Individual: http://bit.ly/rIrfQn
Organization: http://bit.ly/vdfoCj

And this site? Well, over the last year, KAP has become involved in a wide variety of open government projects and this site will serve as the hub for learning about those initiatives. We’re still adding some information – check back often for details about our advisory service, open government conferences and legislative tracking tools.

Questions? Feedback? Email us at director@knowledgeaspower.org.

KAP aims to accomplish its mission by providing online technology, offline civics education, engagement and advising in order to help citizens and government work better, together.

What started as a free, online service to make legislative information accessible online has grown in the past few years to encompass a range of services and programming, each working to resolve underlying challenges to citizen engagement and government accessibility.

Launched in 2008, KAPcitizen, is the first free online service in the US to integrate video, bill tracking, and communications tools for individuals.  KAPcitizen pioneered tools to make citizen’s personalized communications more valuable–and manageable–for legislators. Now in its third year, KAPcitizen is expanding to cover Seattle City Council and several other states around America.

KAPevents build the open government community’s strength through conferences, summits, code-a-thons which develop relationships and technology improvements for governments and civic groups.  By providing low-cost, highly engaging educational events, KAP is helping governments and civic groups modernize, open up, and collaborate.

Out of concern that few Americans learned how to become civically engaged, Knowledge As Power launched KAPcivics. With only 22 states in America testing for civics education, and even fewer teaching teens how to effectively engage in the legislative process, Knowledge As Power created a free civics curriculum called “Act & Impact,” teaching teens and adults how to be informed and effective within the lawmaking process.

In late 2010, Knowledge As Power launched KAPcommunity, a pilot program funded by the City of Seattle, to teach community groups and organizations how to use online tools and offline tactics to effectively engage in the lawmaking process. These “civic skills” classes are matched with outreach events and marketing of KAP’s online tools.  KAPcommunity’s goal is to increase the number, and diversity, of voices advocating to government, while providing these new voices the best tools and strategies for civic engagement.