Advancing Solutions That Close Disparities

• The Challenge
• Promising Practices
• Benchmarks

Help communities and their leadership learn about inequity, injustice and their root causes -- and how it affects their interests..

• Compile and present data about local trends, and encourage discussions that facilitate next steps. Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. utilizes a highly participatory model where many people are engaged in a learning process. The results are then submitted for public discussion.  Data can come from national bodies, such as Kids Count, U.S. Census and National Urban League.
  
  
• Produce educational materials for community consideration. The Heifer Foundation raises money in support of Heifer International's programs throughout the world, with catalogs that describe their vision to end hunger and poverty, and to care for the Earth by creating projects of just and sustainable community development, accented by gifts of livestock and traditions of stewardship. Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation (Arkansas) has supported the development of curricula and materials for use in public schools that feature new views of justice as it has and has not played out in the state, and has advocated teaching the history of race relations in Arkansas.

Encourage discussion of promising solutions, and facilitate next steps.

• Support civic engagement and community organizing.Both are needed to strengthen the base of support needed to press for and implement solutions to inequity and injustice. Arkansas Public Policy Panel works at grassroots, low-income levels to create discussions of issues children and families face. Ideas can result in legislative proposals. Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families frames key messages for policy development. Proposals are crafted and supported through the legislative and implementation process. To advocate solutions, both these groups draw on coalitions of citizen groups. To create a program of Individual Development Accounts in the state of Arkansas, the Southern Good Faith Fund helped write legislation drawing on ideas surfaced from numerous community discussions.
• Support advocacy and its audience.The term advocacy means “to give voice,” but also needed is “to give ears.” Advocacy, short of endorsing specific candidates for office, is legal for philanthropic organizations, and necessary to help move solutions along.
• “Look upstream” for root causes and solutions.Minneapolis' Council for Crime and Justice , supported by The Minneapolis Foundation and others, has helped the community trace the cause of racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes to flaws in the operation of the criminal justice system, and has proposed legislative, judicial, and executive remedies.
• Draw on promising practices and good examples developed elsewhere.The Jacksonville Jaguars Foundation adapted national youth support programs developed by the National Football League and modified and amplified their use to meet local needs.
• Give a boost to ideas already developed.The “recommendations” section of any research or evaluation report addressing inequity or injustice typically is produced with a great deal of thought and support from data, and is often worth revisiting even after time has elapsed.  Also, Effective Communities proposes an awards program – the Effies© – to recognize excellence in grappling with gaps and disparities.

RESOURCES

This page updated 12 August 2008