Please click on the following links to go directly to the desired city site.
Denver
Des Moines
Hartford
Louisville
Oakland
San Antonio
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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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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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A PHD in Life: Cec Ortiz's journey from low-wage worker to city leader. |
This piece tells the story of how Cec Ortiz - Making Connections Denver's first site coordinator - journeyed from a small farming and ranching community in southeast Colorado to eventually become the head of the Denver Mayor's Office of Economic Development. Ortiz was able to overcome her own set of struggles and challenges by building strong bonds with each person she encountered.
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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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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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“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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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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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.
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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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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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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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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"While several dynamics are at work here, it is clear that by making translation equipment available at the meetings of resident groups, we have facilitated a level of interaction and dialogue that did not previously exist."
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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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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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“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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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.
