Communities Driving Change –  Meet Our New Cohort!

We are thrilled to introduce the six community development corporations selected to participate in ‘Communities Driving Change’, a new 12-month pilot program training practitioner teams and their community partners in community-driven data approaches that advance racial and health equity through community development. 

These organizations were selected from a competitive pool of applicants for the depth of their community relationships and their commitment to shifting how investment decisions are made through community-driven data. The cohort is distinctive in both how data is collected, and how it is used: to connect community development and health, to build community power and also strengthen resident capacity to shape the decisions that affect their neighborhoods. Collectively they are working across a range of vital conditions for health and wellbeing*, from humane housing and meaningful work and wealth, to a thriving natural world and lifelong learning.

These organizations will pilot the curriculum developed by BHPN and Verge Impact Partners, that guides community-driven data approaches as outlined in our Community Driven Data and Evaluation Strategies resource. And they will apply it in their own projects. In doing so, they will help us answer the question: what does it look like when community organizations and the people they work with, lead the data that guides investments in their own neighborhoods? 

Throughout the program, each organization and their community partners will work directly with Verge Impact Partners whose expertise in community-driven data is at the heart of the curriculum, and will guide the peer learning across this cohort. BHPN will convene the cohort around partnership dynamics, accountability, and trust, drawing on our resources and national network to help organizations build the institutional relationships that sustain community-driven data over time.

Meet the cohort:

Middletown Connect – Middletown, OH, Residents in six of Middletown’s most vulnerable census tracts will document housing conditions to hold landlords accountable and strengthen community voice.

Everett Community Growers – Everett, MA. Residents will use walking tours, collaborative mapping and photovoice to generate community-owned data that drives investment commitments across housing, environmental health and transportation.

Mexican Heritage Plaza – East San José, CA Residents will lead tracking of investment, displacement and cultural vitality along La Avenida, a community-driven strategy against cultural erasure in East San José.

A Picture’s Worth – Cincinnati, OH Youth and community leaders will co-design the evaluation of a youth-adult dialogue program rooted in belonging, to develop young people as community researchers and build a replicable model for how youth-generated knowledge can inform community conditions.

Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment (PACE) – Los Angeles, CA Community ambassadors from culturally and linguistically diverse neighborhoods will lead multilingual research on energy equity, climate resilience and economic opportunity.

Found Village – Greater Cincinnati, OH – Youth in the child welfare system will co-design a framework defining the conditions for belonging and build a shared resource to guide investment by health systems, funders and community organizations.

We will follow their progress and emerging collective learning.

BHPN is proud to be building towards a future where community knowledge drives the investments that shape health and collective wellbeing.

Support for this program was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Blue Shield of California Foundation. 

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Foundations.

*Vital Conditions for Health and Wellbeing Framework