The Diarist Project Publications
Diarist Project Publications Catalog
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Beating the Odds at Atlanta’s Parks Middle School |
| An inner-city middle school with many risk factors—94% of its students are poor—has experienced a dramatic turnaround during the past few years. In math, for example, the percentage of eighth graders exceeding the state’s standards rose from 1% to 46%. Why has this happened? The answers involve new leaders who received lots of support, a relentless focus on data and involvement by a broad range of partners and community residents. |
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Motivated by Her Two Children, Mayra Lopez Learns To Be an Activist |
In part because of her involvement with Making Connections, Mayra Lopez has become a leader of efforts to make her Oakland neighborhood a better place to raise children. While her story is a very personal one, it also communicates a lot about the process that people living in tough neighborhoods go through to change their lives and their communities.
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The Long and Winding Road to the “New Normal” |
How does a community develop a way to manage a community change initiative that will help sustain this work over time but not undermine the energy of a community working together to create a new way of doing business? The first Making Connections community to confront this challenge has been White Center/Boulevard Park, which is an extremely diverse, mostly lower-income neighborhood south of Seattle. They have learned a lot about the process of developing a “Local Management Entity” and creating what they call the “new normal.”
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Dealing with the Here and Now: Making Connections in Hartford’s resident-run small grants program |
Any long-term community change initiative has a short-term challenge: how to give the community’s residents a sense that things are changing now. In a few Making Connections sites, resident-run small grants programs have led to some concrete changes in its target neighborhoods while also demonstrating the principle that residents themselves can make things happen in their neighborhoods.
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A Different Kind of Network |
The Making Connections Louisville Network is building an ambitious community-wide network that is linking residents not just to one another, but also to many opportunities provided by Making Connections’ partners, such as jobs and asset-building programs. In addition, the network is building new relationships between service providers and residents.
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The E-bulletin as a communications strategy in Des Moines Making Connections |
To carry out the strategy implied in its name – making connections – Des Moines has been e-mailing a weekly “e-bulletin” to more than 800 residents, community-based organizations, service providers, businesses and media. These e-bulletins focus on a wide range of topics: from issues facing low-wage workers to medical debt to diversity at a local organizing group.
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“On the Big Battles, we were getting our butts kicked.” |
The long-time director of a growing organizing group in Denver – and a long-time close partner of Denver Making Connections – reflects about why his groups decided to invest so heavily in a long-term initiative like Making Connections and what has come out of this investment. This publication includes a short reflection by long-time Making Connections Denver Site Team Leader Garland Yates about why he worked hard to engage existing organizing groups in this work.
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“The work just has to keep going” – A Reflection on Denver’s Community Court" |
As the people who helped win a community court based in a Making Connections Denver neighborhood learned, convincing a system to agree to a reform is just the first step. Then that reform needs to be implemented and ultimately institutionalized. This didn’t happen with Denver’s community court and the reflections by five people about the struggle to keep the court going has much to communicate to anyone involved in a system-reform effort.
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“A very intense and complex balancing act” – a Reflection by Oakland Making Connections Coordinator Fred Blackwell" |
The local people who took on the role of coordinating the Making Connections work in the 10 sites faced a great challenge: how to pull together and be an advocate for local people and organizations while also being the connecting point between the local work and the national foundation that was supporting the work, the Annie E. Casey Foundation. One of the first coordinators was Fred Blackwell in Oakland. He says he learned a lot from the experience.
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Easing the Burden of Medical Debt in Des Moines |
More than one in three residents of Making Connections Des Moines neighborhoods struggle with medical debt. But a campaign led by a Making Connections partner - an organizing group called AMOS - helped thousands of Des Moines residents get free or discounted medical care.
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The Gates Cherokee Redevelopment Project: "A huge step forward for low-income people in Denver |
After a three-year campaign, a broad coalition has helped establish a new standard for the community benefits that should be expected when government provides large subsidies to development projects in Denver.
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Unleashing the Power of Parents to Fix Their Kids' Schools |
A Making Connections Denver partner has found ways to engage parents in their children's schools and help them become articulate leaders in a district-wide school reform movement. This publication tells the story of how this movement has been built, what it's achieved so far and what others can learn from this experience.
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Taking Care of Our Own: A Denver Neighborhood Leads the Way in Alternative Youth Justice and Shows a Way that Communities Can Help Build a Model for System Reform |
A Denver Making Connections neighborhood helped establish a community court to handle minor violations by young people living in this community. The idea is to have them make restitution to the community as well as receive services that could deal with the reasons they were getting in trouble in the first place. The publication looks at how Denver's court system was persuaded to make this major change in its approach, discussing many of the lessons learned. The publication also focuses on the changes that happened in this neighborhood before the creation of the community court, changes initiated by Making Connections Denver.
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A Reflection on Why Social Networks Are Critical to Sustainable Change |
The person leading the Annie E. Casey Foundation's work on social networks - Audrey Jordan - explains why social networks are so important to the process of transforming struggling communities. This publication also includes the story of how a community group in Lawrence, Ma., has used a social network approach to revitalize its community.
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A Reflection on How Social Networks Can Become a Powerful Tool to Meet Basic Needs and Build Momentum for Change |
An organization in the border city of Nogales, Az., has used "promotoras" - residents how have been trained to reach out to other residents about health issues - to both meet some of the immediate health needs of low-income families as well as help these families better understand - and ultimately control - the forces that affect their lives. The founder of this organization, Maria Gomez-Murphy, reflects on her organization's social network-approach, explaining how the promotoras do their work and why it has been an effective way to educate and activate many local residents.
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Having Faith in Communities of Faith |
In San Antonio Making Connections has relied heavily on faith-based institutions to start a movement for change. This publication explains how Making Connections built relationships with churches on San Antonio's West Side, what they have accomplished working together and what Making Connections' leaders have learned from this experience.
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Where the Rubber Hits the Road. The Evolving - and Growing - Role of Local Site Coordinators in Making Connections |
To help build a national initiative from the ground up, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has increasingly relied on "local site coordinators." This publication explores this new role through the eyes of the site coordinators themselves. It also explains what they are learning about how to develop local efforts to transform struggling neighborhoods.
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If at First You Don't Succeed. The Evolving EITC Story in Hartford |
Making Connections in Hartford helped launch and invested heavily in a local EITC campaign in 2002. The investment paid off in 2005. In those three years it learned a lot about strategic investments and partnering with local organizations.
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Building a Pipeline to Success: A Look Inside the Making Connections Louisville Career Development Initiative |
In Louisville, Making Connections has successfully connected residents from its neighborhoods to jobs in a nearby hospital complex. But it hasn't always been easy, and MC has learned a lot about what it takes to build a successful jobs pipeline.
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Making Media Matter: How and Why Making Connections in Hartford Stressed Communications to Explain Its Work and Pursue Its Neighborhood Transformation Goals |
An early emphasis on communications has helped clarify what Making Connections in Hartford is all about, provided an opportunity for people from two very diverse neighborhoods to work together on common issues, and developed a group of residents and community organization leaders who understand both the importance of media and the way to get a community's messages out through the media.
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Increasing Transparency and Local Ownership: Making Connections Denver Turns a Difficult Leadership Transition into an Opportunity to Transform Itself |
This story is an in-depth examination of the process Denver Making Connections used to hire a new site coordinator, a process that deeply involved six residents of Denver's target neighborhoods. This transition in leadership also became a transition in the way Denver MC is governed, with residents playing a more prominent role in a new governance structure. This publication also includes a reflection with Site Team Leader Garland Yates about his strategy around these transitions.
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Learning From a Learning Partnership: What Denver's Community Learning Network Can Teach About How to Build A Resident-Driven Process and Keep a Community-Building Initiative Accountable |
A key element of Making Connections is the idea of each site having a local "learning partner" that functions as a source of local data, data that can be used to carry out, evaluate and learn from the local work. In Denver Making Connections was able to deeply engage residents in this work. This publication explains how this happened and what was learned.
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Journey to Engagement: A first-person reflection on how to engage residents. |
For more than 30 years, former Casey Foundation Senior Program Officer Garland Yates has been working with residents in low-income communities across the country. This publication - which is based on a series of interviews - lays out what he's learned about how to engage residents in trying to transform their communities. It also tells the story of how he came to this work.
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Community Mobilization and Action for Results: A new approach to building local movements to strengthen families and transform neighborhoods. |
This publication lays out the argument for a Foundation-wide commitment to community mobilization, explains why a focus on results can and should be the focus of a mobilization strategy, and lays out the lessons learned so far about how to build a local movement for change. This was done at the request of the person who led the "CMAR" work within the foundation, Garland Yates. It is another example of the role of diarists in helping practitioners pull together their thinking about their work.
Many low-income neighborhoods have experienced an epidemic of predatory lending, which involves loans with extraordinarily high interest rates and fees that go to people who don't have access to traditional loans. This publication tells the story of a group in Des Moines - supported by Making Connections Des Moines - that has successfully fought this practice, winning a large settlement for people hurt by predatory loans and helping change the state's lending laws. It includes reflection by Making Connections staff about the lessons this success story has for other MC sites.
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Helping Low Income Immigrant Families Buy the "American Dream". |
This is the story of how an Oakland Making Connections' seed grant helped dozens of immigrant and refugee families buy homes. The report looks at the role a grant can play in building the Making Connections process. It also finds lessons in this experience for other MC sites.
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Making a Difference: One Life-One Family-Transformed |
A crucial part of transforming a low-income community is transforming the lives of individuals and families who live in that community. This publication tells the story of a Denver resident who has been on a long transformation process: Candace Redshirt.
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Rebuilding a Neighborhood from the Ground Up |
When people talk about the potential of resident-driven community change, they often talk about Boston's Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. Begun in the mid-1980s, "DSNI" has helped bring about a palpable change in this once-forsaken neighborhood.
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Bringing a Passion for Juvenile Justice System Reform To Making Connections |
At a Making Connections site, a Casey Foundation staff person serves as the "Site Team Leader." These "STLs" have brought a very diverse set of experiences to this role. In Oakland, STL Bart Lubow has a long history of working in juvenile justice reform, a history that influenced his approach to Making Connections.
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A New Way to Give It Away: How a small grants program has engaged residents and achieved quick successes in Boston |
A challenge in doing a long-term community transformation initiative is what to do about the short term. This publication takes a look at how this challenge was overcome in Boston.
