The Aspen Institute
Roundtable on Comprehensive
Community Initiatives for
Children and Families
Comprehensive Community Initiatives (CCIs) are neighborhood-based efforts that seek improved outcomes for individuals and families as well as improvements in neighborhood conditions by working comprehensively across social, economic and physical sectors. Additionally, CCIs operate on the principle that community building -- that is, strengthening institutional capacity at the neighborhood level, enhancing social capital and personal networks, and developing leadership -- is a necessary aspect of the process of transforming distressed neighborhoods.
The Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives is a forum in which persons involved with CCIs can meet to discuss challenges, discern lessons, and work on problems that are of common concern. It is Co-chaired by Harold A. Richman, the Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor of Social Welfare Policy and director of the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago, and Lisbeth B. Schorr, director of the Harvard Project on Effective Interventions and author of Within Our Reach: Breaking the Cycle of Disadvantage and Common Purpose: Strengthening Families and Neighborhoods to Rebuild America. The Roundtable was founded in 1992 under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1994 became a policy program of the Aspen Institute. The Roundtable currently has 33 members including foundation officers, program directors, experts in the field, and public officials. Two federal agencies and ten private foundations fund the activities of the Roundtable.
Roundtable members meet once or twice a year to discuss issues that are at the forefront of the CCI field and to help evolve the Roundtable staff’s work agenda. Meetings generally include both unstructured and structured discussions. In unstructured discussions, members provide updates to the group on their initiatives and new developments in the field. In structured discussions, outside experts, staff, or sub-committee working group members make formal presentations to the group on commissioned topics. Examples of the issues addressed in structured discussions have included:
- Goverance structures in CCIs;
- Clarifying core constructs in the field, for example, how concepts like community building, leadership, and capacity building are operationalized within a CCI context;
- Alternative approaches to evaluating CCIs;
- The "infrastructure" of technical, financial, policy and other resources that support the CCI field; and
While the mission of the Roundtable is wide in scope, the activities undertaken by staff reflect a focus on a smaller set of in-depth activities:
- The role of race in the context of CCIs.
Voices from the Field: Learning from Comprehensive Community Initiatives In 1995, the Roundtable sponsored 11 focus group discussions among various participants in CCIs, including foundation representatives, initiative directors and staff, evaluators, members of the governance structures of local initiatives, residents of the neighborhoods in which CCIs are taking place, and other experts and observers of the field. The aim was to elicit the experience and conclusions of actors in the field in order to produce an early analytical portrait of CCIs that could be of use to a number of audiences. The discussions became the basis of a report entitled, Voices from the Field: Learning from Comprehensive Community Initiatives. The report gives a portrait of CCIs and describes their goals, principles and operational strategies. It also presents the general lessons that are being learned in the field and the dilemmas and challenges that face the various actors involved in CCIs.
Steering Committee on Evaluation In April 1994, the Evaluation Steering Committee of the Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives was created to help resolve the limitations of traditional evaluation methods for the need to learn from and assess the effectiveness of CCIs. The group’s objective is to bring together information from three perspectives in order to identify new approaches to the evaluation of CCIs: (a) on-the-ground experience designing, implementing and evaluating CCIs; (b) state-of-the-art social science research findings about pathways leading to individual, family and community success and the relationships among them; and (c) theories and methods from the field of evaluation. In 1995 the Roundtable published, the volume, New Approaches to Evaluating Comprehensive Community Initiatives: Concepts, Methods, and Contexts, edited by James Connell, Anne Kubisch, Lisbeth Schorr and Carol Weiss. The papers in this volume explore key dilemmas in the evaluation of CCIs. Collectively, the papers suggest that CCIs are difficult to evaluate for reasons that relate both to the design of the initiatives themselves and the state of evaluation methods and measures. They also suggest that work can be done on both fronts that will enhance the field’s ability to judge the effectiveness of CCIs and, ultimately, other social welfare interventions.
New Approaches to Evaluating Community Initiatives: Volume 2: Theory, Measurement, and Analysis, edited by Karen Fulbright-Anderson, Anne C. Kubisch, and James P. Connell, was published by the Roundtable in 1998. The book offers a progress report on work accomplished in developing a theory of change approach to CCI evaluation. This volume presents reflections from the growing number of evaluation practitioners using this approach, bringing together the lessons learned from early attempts to apply the theory of change concepts in the field.
Internet-based Resources for Comprehensive Community Initiatives The Roundtable has developed two Internet-based resources for CCIs. The first, Community Building Resource Exchange (www.commbuild.org), provides a forum for exchanging resources and information by providing links to a wide range of materials covering the theoretical bases and practical applications of comprehensive, community building approaches to neighborhood revitalization. The Roundtable’s own web site (www.aspenroundtable.org) is designed to provide information about our current projects through on-line publications and working papers, as well as our catalogue of measurement instruments related to community research. This feature of the Roundtable site, called Measures for Community Research is one of the first resources of its kind, and will serve as a clearinghouse for the collection and distribution of instruments and other tools related to key community-level outcomes. Race and Community Revitalization During 1998, Roundtable members and staff began the work of developing a framework for a new project, Examining Comprehensive Community Revitalization through a Race/Ethnicity Lens. In July practitioners, policy experts, and academics attended a national seminar sponsored by the Roundtable to examine the intersection between structural racism and community revitalization, and to refine our conceptual framework for the project. A broad range of scholars were also convened to prepare critical literature reviews in 22 areas of political, civic, cultural, economic, and social life in America. These reviews, and the conceptual framework for the project, will be published as a volume later in 1999. For further information, contact:Anne C. Kubisch
Karen Fulbright-Anderson
Co-DirectorsAndrea Anderson, Research Associate
Patricia Auspos, Research Associate
Ivett Colon, Office Assistant
Keith Lawrence, Research Associate
Gretchen Susi, Research AssistantThe Aspen Institute
Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives
281 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10010
Tel: (212) 677-5510
Fax: (212) 677-5650
The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives
Roundtable Members Harold Richman (Co-Chair)
Faculty Associate
Hermon Dunlap Smith Professor
The University of ChicagoLisbeth B. Schorr (Co-Chair)
Lecturer in Social Medicine
Project on Effective Interventions at Harvard UniversityMichael Bailin
President
Edna McConnell Clark FoundationJohn Barros
Executive Director
Dudley Street Neighborhood InitiativesDouglas Besharov
Resident Scholar
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy ResearchAngela Blackwell
President and CEO
PolicyLinkBarbara B. Blum
Senior Fellow in Child and Family Policy
National Center for Children in PovertyAlvertha Bratton Penny
Program Officer
William & Flora Hewlett FoundationXavier de Souza Briggs
Associate Professor
Harvard University
John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentPaul Jellinek
Vice President
The Robert Wood Johnson FoundationOtis Johnson
Dean
Savannah State University
College of Liberal Arts and Social SciencesAnne C. Kubisch
Co-Director
Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives
The Aspen InstituteSusan Lloyd
Director
Building Community Capacity
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur FoundationGayle McClure
Vice President - Programs
W.K. Kellogg FoundationAnita Miller
Board Member
Comprehensive Community Revitalization ProgramWilliam A. Morrill
Senior Fellow
Caliber AssociatesRobert O'Neill, Jr.
President
National Academy of Public AdministrationTerry Peterson
Senior Fellow for Educational Policy & PartnershipRon Register
ConsultantGeoffrey Canada
Executive Director
Rheedlen Centers for Families and ChildrenGaetana D. Ebbole
Executive Director
Children's Services Council of Palm Beach CountyPeter Edelman
Professor of Law
Georgetown University Law CenterKaren Fulbright-Anderson
Co-Director
Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives
The Aspen InstituteSid Gardner
President
Children and Family FuturesJim Gibson
Senior Policy Advisor/President Emeritus
Center for the Study of Social PolicyDavid Harris
Director of Florida Philanthropy
Community Initiative Program
MacArthur FoundationDavid Hornbeck
ConsultantCraig Howard
Vice President
Manpower Demonstration Research CorporationJulius B. Richmond
John D. MacArthur Professor of Health Policy, Emeritus
Department of Social Medicine
Harvard UniversityMark Ridley-Thomas
City Councilman, Eighth District
Los AngelesCharles Royer
National Program Director
Urban Health InitiativeAnn Segal
ConsultantRalph Smith
Vice President
Annie E. Casey FoundationJeremy Travis
Senior Fellow
Urban InstituteGary Walker
President
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Copyright © 1999 by The Aspen Institute
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