Simone Peterson named one of Knight Cities Challenge winners

For the first time since the inaugural Knight Cities Challenge when Realize Bradenton was named a winner in 2015, a Bradenton submission has drawn a share of the Knight Foundation’s $5 million overall prize.

Bradenton submissions have made their way into the finals each year of the competition designed to draw innovative ideas from the 26 cities where Knight Ridder once owned newspapers. This year was no exception with Bradenton boasting five finalists. Manatee County Neighborhood Services’ Simone Peterson claimed two of the finalist positions and was named one of several winners on Monday for her Speak Up Bradenton concept.

Peterson will be awarded $32,000 to get her idea off the ground. It conceptualizes ways to connect people from different backgrounds who love the city and want to pursue enhancement projects but aren’t sure how to go about it. Peterson’s concept is unique in that she isn’t waiting for people to come to her, she will go to them with the help of the Manatee Millennial Movement.

“We will begin looking at key areas where people tend to congregate like bus stops, the malls and playgrounds so we can talk to parents,” Peterson said. “We want better public input and we’ll be setting up digital opportunities for people to get involved because it’s not always easy for people and parents to make our meetings.”

The program will roll out in three phases with the first one being fact sharing information regarding the Knight Cities grant funding and its potential uses.

“Secondly, we will be asking, ‘Now what do you want to see done?’ Third we will involve them. We don’t want to own it ourselves. We want the people to own it, buy into their ideas and that way it will be more successful,” Peterson said.

Peterson said it was, “definitely an honor. I didn’t think I would even be a finalist out of more 4,000 submissions so this really means a lot to me. I like to call Knight funding risk capital because it allows you to try something out over 18 months and do projects that would otherwise be hard to request funding for. The bottom line is that we may be government employees, but we are also citizens and don’t have all the answers. But the community does so we will go looking for them.”

Peterson said residents can expect to start seeing team members hit the streets around September or October as her team also begins a public information campaign showing how people can get involved.

“We just want people involved,” she said. “It’s frustrating to do a lot of work in our meetings where two people may show up, roll something out and it’s not at all what people wanted. We want to do things from the front end, not the back end and this gives us that opportunity.”

This story was originally published June 12, 2017 at 12:02 AM with the headline "Simone Peterson named one of Knight Cities Challenge winners."