I interview Luke Hohmann, CEO & Founder of First Root.
Participatory Budgeting (PB) is a democratic process in which a group of students determines how to invest a shared budget to improve a school.
PB authentically motivates students to learn and practice the “Four Cs” of the 21st Century curriculum: creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration — all while teaching design thinking, civics, and jump-starting their journey to increasing financial literacy. Students experience actual agency and stewardship over their futures, learning through their own experiences how money works.
Participatory Budgeting creates several benefits for students, schools, and their communities:
Gives students a chance to experience democracy in action by providing students with concrete evidence of the benefits of getting involved
Helps students engage in all aspects of design thinking as they create, refine, vote, and fund proposals
Strengthens the school community by creating alignment and positive interactions among all stakeholders: students, teachers, parents, and administrators
Creates self-confidence and civic pride as student-generated proposals are implemented
Develops financial literacy skills, including budgeting and financial planning
Luke is one of the world’s leading experts on applying Participatory Budgeting at scale in communities and business settings.
Before founding FirstRoot, Luke started Conteneo, an enterprise software platform based on game theory for collaborative decision-making.
The author of four books, Luke has been cited as an inventor in more than a dozen patents and is an internationally recognized expert in Agile Software Development.
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