PEP Talks (City of Portland Community Engagement Summit)

As part of the City of Portland Office of Civic Life’s Portland Engagement Project (PEP), the City convened a series of PEP Talks on April 27, 28, and 29, 2023 in partnership with Oregon’s Kitchen Table and the Center for Public Service, both housed in the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. The PEP Talks were supported by the City of Portland staff, OKT staff, students and faculty from the Center for Public Service, and numerous community partners. The PEP Talks identified four international guests whose expertise was relevant to questions being posed by the City of Portland. The international guest experts were joined by local community leaders and experts who provided the context and history of engagement in the City of Portland.  

This summary of the effort emphasizes three themes of equitable engagement organized into the broad categories of people, place, and practice. The results of the PEP Talks Summit also revealed three anchoring needs for equitable engagement in the City. These include:

• Recognizing past harm and repairing relationships
• Developing and sustaining non‐transactional relationships
• Sharing power

This report concludes with guiding questions that the City may use to inform its engagement efforts. Taken together, these may be considered as the City explores its next steps and synthesizes these results with other initiatives.

The City will be sharing the video recordings from the summit (currently in process) and we'll update with those when they are completed.