Can ordinary citizens solve our toughest problems? Boston 25 News [Video]

BEND, OREGON — (AP) — Eliza Wilson is a little nervous as she draws the microphone close, but she is determined to share her life story. “My father was a disabled veteran,” she says. “I first experienced homelessness when I was 5 years old.”

Wilson, who’s 36, leads programs focused on unhoused youth. On a recent Saturday, she is addressing a citizen assembly, a grassroots gathering seeking solutions to tough local challenges.

Her audience consists of 30 ordinary Oregonians. They are acupuncturists and elk hunters; house cleaners and retired riverboat pilots. None are public policy experts. All the same, these participants have been asked to recommend new strategies for combating youth homelessness — a major problem in this affluent Oregon city and the surrounding rural areas of Deschutes County.

This unusual experiment in small-D democracy is underwritten by more than $250,000 in grants from backers such as the Rockefeller Foundation …