Lear more about how East Bay Local Development Corporation, CASA, and Community Solutions navigated challenges and tested new strategies in year one of Partners in Progress.

East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation

East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) builds healthy, vibrant and safe neighborhoods in Oakland and the greater East Bay in Northern California. In the first PIP program year, EBALDC formalized its role as a Partners in Progress leader by bringing together a diverse range of partners including neighborhood organizations, residents, government agencies, and health partners to form the San Pablo Area Revitalization Collaborative (SPARC). SPARC is working to improve the San Pablo Avenue Corridor for the benefit of long-time residents. The four pillars of its Healthy Neighborhood framework are healthy residents, healthy community and housing, healthy economy, and healthy partnerships.

The EBALDC Case Study focuses on the first year of work, in which EBALDC and its partners came together to create SPARC and develop agreement on using the Healthy Neighborhood framework. The Case Study provides initial insights about EBALDC’s leadership role and the process of building a cross-sector, cross-silo collaborative, including: How the collaborative members, most of whom work in community development and human services, came to choose Healthy Neighborhoods as the frame for their collective work; EBALDC’s evolving role while building the collaborative; and reflections on why participating in SPARC will enable its members to achieve more than they each could working alone.

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CASA

CASA improves the quality of life for immigrant communities in Maryland through a range of integrated programs that empower immigrants by involving them in transforming their own communities and lives. In the first PIP program year, CASA deepened its community quarterback role as the leader of the Langley Park Promise Neighborhood (LPPN) through their initiative: SOMOS Langley Park. CASA worked on integrating the activities of multiple partners to address an array of challenges facing low-income immigrant families in Langley Park in order to ensure stability and access to opportunity for all residents. CASA led the expansion of educational programs, family financial education models, parent engagement programs, holistic support centers for immigrant families, increased access to health services, and tracking of community data. CASA also led a grassroots campaign to ensure that building a light-rail Purple Line through Langley Park would not displace residents and businesses.

The case study focuses on CASA’s commitment to community organizing and resident leadership, and on the PIP collaborative activities in the first grant year, and. One of the key results from the first PIP grant year was an award of $3 million from the US Department of Education’s Investing in Innovation Fund (i3). Somos Langley Park brought together a team that included CASA, the Prince George’s County School Department, three elementary schools that serve Langley Park, and the University of Maryland. CASA’s commitment to community organizing and leadership development enabled the collaborative to put forward a peer-to-peer “promodores” approach to parenting education, which was a key element in the successful grant application.

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Community Solutions

The Brownsville Partnership (BP) is an initiative of Community Solutions, a national non-profit headquartered in New York City. The Brownsville Partnership is a coordinated effort of residents and two-dozen public and private organizations working collectively to improve the health, safety, and prosperity of Brownsville, Brooklyn, one of the city’s poorest and most challenged neighborhoods. The PIP initiative supported Community Solutions in formalizing its role as community quarterback and expanding the 5,000 Jobs Campaign – a community-wide campaign to connect 5,000 Brownsville residents to jobs by 2017.

The 5,000 Jobs Campaign has four phases: prototype, pilot, scale and replicate. During the first PIP grant year, the Campaign completed the prototype. In this phase, more than 20 not for profit, government, and community organizations divided themselves into three separate exploratory teams to test approaches to optimizing the City’s existing workforce system. The team leads met at least twice each week, once with just team members, and once with Community Solutions staff. The meetings focused on challenges and progress on critical steps in the employment process, including outreach, resume development, childcare arrangements, interview preparation, transportation, and job referrals. All the teams came together with Community Solutions staff for 30, 60, and 90 day reviews to assess progress and make course corrections based on emerging learnings. These built-in cycles created targeted deadlines and fostered cross-collaboration for process improvements.

The case study focuses on the development of the four-phase approach, and the initial results from the prototype phase. One of the key findings from the prototyping work: to connect 5,000 residents to jobs by 2017, the Campaign partners would need to engage in outreach that touches almost 125,000 Brownsville residents. Since the case study was completed, this finding has catalyzed major design changes in the pathway to employment, included the creation of a mobile Workforce One Center that has visited Brownsville and the creation of a separate stream (and providing support) for resume preparation.

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