About the Diarist Project

The Diarist Project is a new approach being used by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to learn from its work to strengthen families and transform struggling neighborhoods. This transformation work is being undertaken in part through Making Connections, a decade-long effort to transform neighborhoods in 10 cities across the country.

Diarists work most closely with the people trying to implement this initiative in each city, especially "Site Team Leaders" (generally Casey Foundation national staff members) and "Local Site Coordinators" (staff people who manage the work locally).

They regularly ask these people to reflect on their work, focusing on their challenges, strategies and lessons they are learning.
They also ask these people to reflect on certain "critical topics," such as what they are learning about how to engage residents and involve other partners in the work. An example is Garland Yates' reflections about engaging residents.
Finally, diarists write about specific stories that are coming from the local work, such as the success that Making Connections Des Moines has had around predatory lending.

Why the diarist work can be important over time

Often certain programs or initiatives generate a lot of excitement. They seem to demonstrate a new approach to, say, making schools more successful or child welfare agencies more effective. But often efforts to try a similar approach in another city are not as successful.

Why is it that seemingly promising models sometimes don't travel well? No doubt one reason is that every community is unique. Another reason often cited is that a charismatic leader played a key role in the initial success and that person can't be cloned.

The Diarist Project has a different focus. It is not focusing simply on the model or on a particular leader. Instead it is trying to better understand and document the often long and challenging process of implementing any ambitious project or initiative.

It is trying to do this through the eyes of the people engaged in this process. Diarists ask the leaders of these efforts to reflect on what they did to engage people, build influence or overcome the inevitable challenges. What were their strategies? Why? What made their initiative work (or why did it fall short in some areas)? What would they tell others embarking on similar work?

The hope is that better understanding the process that led to a success will allow that success to be better replicated in another place.

Why this website?

This website is intended to make the materials coming from the diarist project easily accessible to others doing this kind of work. It is also intended as a way to make our evolving thinking about the diarist work available to people who are interested in this approach to documenting an initiative.

However, a diary is intended to be private, at least as it is being written. Much of the diarist work involves regular reflection interviews with the practitioners. Diarists try to summarize what is being said in these interviews but much of this material will not be publicly available while the initiative is being implemented unless the practitioner has expressly allowed it to be public.

The hope is that these regular reflection interviews will form a valuable archive for researchers and writers who want look back on and learn from an ambitious, change-oriented initiative such as Making Connections.

This website includes a few of these reflections by people who have allowed us to make them available.

What's New?

Reflections on Making Connections & Neighborhood Transformation