Projects

Evaluation and Technical Assistance to the Communities Creating Racial Equity Initiative

Communities Creating Racial Equity (CCRE) is a multi-year, national initiative of Everyday Democracy (formerly Study Circles). Everyday Democracy is the primary effort of the Paul J. Aicher Foundation. CCRE is a partnership between Everyday Democracy and 8 communities to implement dialogue to action to change efforts that contribute to racial equity outcomes. CCRE is operating in Jacksonville, Florida, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, Lynchburg, Virginia, Montgomery County, Maryland, New Haven, Connecticut, South Sacramento, California, Stratford, Connecticut, and Syracuse, New York.

CAPD is currently in the midst of a two year evaluation of CCRE. The goal is to assess the value of Everyday Democracy's supports to communities, particularly with respect to actions that lead to racial equity outcomes. In the first year of the evaluation, CAPD partnered with Linda Bowen of the Institute for Community Peace to provide technical assistance to Everyday Democracy management, staff and senior associates on issues of racial equity, white privilege and structural racism so that they could more fully support communities working on these issues. Consistent with the values of Everyday Democracy, CAPD and the Institute for Community Peace, we also created an advisory group for the evaluation of CCRE that included a representative from each of the CCRE communities (an evaluation liaison), helped Everyday Democracy articulate its theory of change and outcomes for CCRE, provided sample outcomes and indicators for some of the most common areas of racial equity work in the communities, completed workshops on evaluation of racial equity outcomes using equitable and racially sensitive processes in evaluation, and, with the support of Everyday Democracy and other funders, completed www.evaluationtoolsforracialequity.org - a website that communities and Everyday Democracy staff can use to support their own assessment work. A cross-site evaluation report is due early 2010, just after the completion of the second year of CCRE work. It will be based on data from a logic model reporting form; telephone interviews with key stakeholders in each site; results of an on-line survey of participants in CCRE processes in each site; and information accumulated over two years of working with Everyday Democracy and the CCRE communities.