The Impact Of Community Work

This book provides essential guidance for professionals and pre-qualifying students on how to gather and generate evidence of the impact of projects in the community. Including case studies from diverse community settings, it provides easy to implement, practical ideas and examples of methods to demonstrate the impact of community work. Considering not only evaluation, but also the complex processes of evidence gathering, it will help all those involved with work in the community to demonstrate the impact and value of their work. The book provides: • guidance for how to present different findings to different audiences; • methods for effectively demonstrating the value of your work; • how to demonstrate the scale, quality and significance of impact.

This book provides essential guidance for professionals and pre-qualifying students on how to gather and generate evidence of the impact of projects in the community. Including case studies from diverse community settings, it provides easy to implement, practical ideas and examples of methods to demonstrate the impact of community work. Considering not only evaluation, but also the complex processes of evidence gathering, it will help all those involved with work in the community to demonstrate the impact and value of their work. The book provides: • guidance for how to present different findings to different audiences; • methods for effectively demonstrating the value of your work; • how to demonstrate the scale, quality and significance of impact.

Community-based research (CBR) refers to collaborative investigation by academics and non-academic community members that fosters positive change on a local level. Despite recent trends toward engaged scholarship, few publications demonstrate how to effectively integrate CBR into academic course work or take advantage of its potential for achieving community change. Community-Based Research: Teaching for Community Impact fills these gaps by providing: * An overview of language and methods used by professionals engaged in CBR* A framework for orienting CBR toward concrete community outcomes* Effective ways to integrate CBR into course content, student-driven projects, and initiatives spanning disciplines, curricula, campuses and countries* Lessons learned in working toward positive outcomes for students and in communitiesThis text is designed for faculty, graduate students, service-learning and other engaged learning and scholarship practitioners, alliance members, special interest groups, and organizations that desire to strengthen student learning and utilize research for improvement in their communities.

Collective Impact as a tool to bring about community change has seen remarkable growth in usage since 2011. Collective Impact has been used successfully with a variety of local issues and has raised the consciousness of how community groups interact as well as the approaches that can lead to long-term innovations. This edited volume sets forth conceptual foundations for using Collective Impact as well as sharing basic approaches that have succeeded in projects under diverse circumstances. It will be useful for both academics and practitioners as Collective Impact continues to undergo substantial changes in focus and direction. Building on Kania and Kramer’s influential work, it provides readers with detailed insights not only into how the Collective Impact system works but also innovative applications to issues facing community developers. The diverse topics shared by the contributing authors make this volume especially important for practitioners designing programs to bring about long-term changes in their communities. Including discussion about how Collective Impact has succeeded in different governmental settings, this book demonstrates how Collective Impact has been modified to accommodate the associated cultural differences with 10 chapters written by experienced on-the-ground community development experts.

The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.

This book revisits community development especially questioning the meaning of the term community in the changing global and international context. The nature and dynamics of what constitutes community are changing to suit the needs of people living in a technologically advanced nature of life. Communities that were based on face-to-face interactions, sense of belonging and ‘we’ feelings are being replaced or overtaken by virtual communities. What is seen is that face-to-face human interaction is being minimized by technologically advanced ways of communicating, such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype and various other such mechanisms that have traversed physical boundaries and made human interaction possible. This new development has also been instrumental in generating new ideologies, new ways of working with people and addressing human causes. The book delivers practical advice and shares strategies that are based on the real-life experience of working with communities across the nations. It gives breadth and depth of knowledge on community development theory, practice principles, values and illustrates implications for practice based on research and practice experiences that has wider applicability. All the chapters discuss the community development approach/method as a strategy to bring about change in the society. Following a preliminary discussion by Kalpana Goel of the meanings of community and community development, all the chapters discuss the community development approach/method as a strategy to bring about change in the society.

This guide was written as a quick primer for transportation professionals and analysts who assess the impacts of proposed transportation actions on communities. It outlines the community impact assessment process, highlights critical areas that must be examined, identifies basic tools and information sources, and stimulates the thought-process related to individual projects. In the past, the consequences of transportation investments on communities have often been ignored or introduced near the end of a planning process, reducing them to reactive considerations at best. The goals of this primer are to increase awareness of the effects of transportation actions on the human environment and emphasize that community impacts deserve serious attention in project planning and development-attention comparable to that given the natural environment. Finally, this guide is intended to provide some tips for facilitating public involvement in the decision making process.

Innovation and Scaling for Impact forces us to reassess how social sector organizations create value. Drawing on a decade of research, Christian Seelos and Johanna Mair transcend widely held misconceptions, getting to the core of what a sound impact strategy entails in the nonprofit world. They reveal an overlooked nexus between investments that might not pan out (innovation) and expansion based on existing strengths (scaling). In the process, it becomes clear that managing this tension is a difficult balancing act that fundamentally defines an organization and its impact. The authors examine innovation pathologies that can derail organizations by thwarting their efforts to juggle these imperatives. Then, through four rich case studies, they detail innovation archetypes that effectively sidestep these pathologies and blend innovation with scaling. Readers will come away with conceptual models to drive progress in the social sector and tools for defining the future of their organizations.

In this book, leading social researchers from Australia, India, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, the UK and USA discuss the impact of the novel coronavirus pandemic in their respective countries. They explore socio-cultural, health, economic and educational aspects of people’s lives, and governments’ policies and programmes. Their analyses show how coronavirus infects indiscriminately and impacts discriminately, particularly the disadvantaged and marginalized groups. The pandemic exposes hidden health inequalities and calls for structural changes. It significantly contributes to lessons learned from the pandemic and the understanding of implications for community and social development. The book is a useful resource for further research and action, and policies and programmes to fight the pandemic and support people and communities with care and compassion.