TransformRVA Better Housing Coalition 25th Anniversary

Building Neighborhoods for All: Civic Engagement

Panel Presentation by Audrey Jordan, Ph.D.

May 21, 2015

INTRODUCTORY COMMENTS

Virginia Commonwealth University – my education and my EducationSocial Policy and Social Work, Survey and Evaluation Research Lab, COPC

Annie E. Casey Foundation’s UMHI – East District InitiativeCynthia Newbille, force of nature, and Mrs. Annie E. Giles, griot

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s UHI – Youth Matters(the false choice of focus on treetops vs. grassroots)

Key Points

Translations, transactions, and transformations1 – very different interactions

Social connections – if you lean into them – are transformative

Story about a transformational “dual-world” experience taught to me by Ms. Annie Giles

1Manuel Pastor: Transactions, Transformations, Translations: Metrics that Matter for Building, Scaling and Funding Social Movements

“We need to know you care before we care how much you know.”

Mrs. Annie Giles

Key Points"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.“ (Einstein) Not supposed to be trying to win a game, stick a flag in a mountain, so why do funders act this way?Community capacities as the critical interim success in a long-term, sustainable place-based change initiative

Key Points

Your Initiative is not the sun in the middle of their galaxy Authentic Demand as “honeycomb” of capacities2

The only way to know these is for YOU (all of you) to engage (flip the script)

2Sustaining Neighborhood Change: The Power of Resident Leadership, Social Networks and Community Mobilization (AECF monograph)

Key Points

Diversity inclusion equity

You can’t/must not do everything

Innovation with Provisionality

“Let’s go how far we can see, then see how far we can go” (Garland Yates)

Q & A?