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Article history:
Received 3 July 2009
Accepted 7 July 2009
Available online 16 July 2009
Keywords:
Youth development
Community
Theory of change
Evaluation
Community-based organizations
Youth participation
a b s t r a c t
Community organizations are potentially important mechanisms to support the well-being of children,
youth, and their families in ways that are responsive and appropriate to their particular circumstances and
with reference to the context of the neighborhoods in which they live. They do this, in part, by engaging with
those with whom they seek to work in multiple ways: formally and informally, through a broad range of
intervention strategies, activities, and programs, and by establishing ongoing, day-to-day interactions that
are both exible and grounded in an understanding of local context, individual needs, and community
circumstances. However, given the complexity and ambiguity of the inputs and the breadth of their intended
outcomes, understanding the impact that such organizations may have is problematic. This paper provides a
brief case-study description in an effort to begin to tease out the inputs, outputs, and expected outcomes in
one particular example of community-based practice. In particular, it seeks to identify and begin to
investigate the range and nature of intermediate outcomes that may be posited to lead to the broader
outcomes at the individual, family, and community level that such organizations often seek to effect.
2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The local community has long been a target of intervention for
addressing the needs of children and families, particularly those living
under disadvantaged circumstances (e.g., Halpern, 1995; Miller, 1981).
Currently, community is again ascendant as an organizing principle
for social intervention in a number of arenasfrom housing to health
to child protection to economic developmentincluding a broad
range of practices and initiatives focused explicitly on the well-being
of children and families. This current focus on communitiesin the
United States taking place in the context of signicant decentralization
and privatization (e.g., Marwell, 2004)has come about for several
reasons. First is the recognition that the needs and circumstances of
(especially poor) children and families are often interrelated, and that
categorical approaches to addressing them are often insufcient
(Gardner, 1989; Levitan, Mangum, & Pines, 1989; Schorr, 1988; Wilson,
1987). Second is a belief among many funders of social programs that
local communities are where these needs and circumstances come
together, and where they can be best addressed (Chaskin, 1998). Third
is the increasing availability of research supporting the notion that
indeed, for children and youth in particular, community context
matters (Aber, Gephart, Brooks-Gunn, & Connell, 1997; Blythe &
Leffert, 1995; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Garbarino, 1992; Sampson,
Morenoff and Gannon-Rowly, 2002). Fourth is the notion that local
1128
1
Community Areas were dened in the 1930s by University of Chicago sociologist
Ernest Burgess based on social surveys of city residents. The community identity
provided by the mapping of community areas over time became widely adopted, and
subsequent study suggested that they retained symbolic relevance, though they were
recognized as one among several ways of identifying areas of the city among other
kinds of neighborhood names and denitions (Hunter, 1974; Venkatesh 2001). Today,
census data are routinely aggregated to provide proles of community areas in the
Chicago Area Fact Book (Chicago Fact Book Consortium 2004), and the 77 dened
community areas are often used as proxies for Chicago communities by scholars,
government, and community organizations.
Population
% White
% Black
% Hispanic
% Asian
Med. hshld. income
% Poverty
% Single-female
headed family hshlds
Education (age 25+)
% HS graduate +
% some college +
% bachelors degree +
Employment
Mgmt/professional
Svc/sales/ofce
Residential stability
(same house in 1995)
West
Elsdon
Gage
Park
Chicago
Lawn
West
Lawn
W. Englewood
15,921
66.56
0.59
49.46
0.87
$ 45,310
6.9
17.7
39,193
47.45
7.30
79.30
0.52
$ 36,463
19.0
19.2
61,412
23.64
52.99
35.06
0.69
$ 35,983
19.8
38.3
29,235
62.85
2.77
51.92
0.98
$ 47,017
7.4
18.4
45,282
0.61
98.12
1.01
0.07
$ 26,693
32.1
54.1
61.8
28.7
9.1
46.0
20.7
5.8
65.3
35.4
9.4
65.5
34.6
11.4
62.8
31.3
4.8
17.4
43.9
58.2
11.8
38.6
55.5
16.4
49.4
55.6
19.9
43.3
55.8
17.4
58.3
67.6
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population and Housing, Summary File 1:
June 2001.
U.S. Census Bureau, 2000 Census of Population and Housing, Summary File 3: August
2002.
Chicago Community Area aggregations prepared by: Chicago Area Geographic Information
Study (CAGIS) under contract to the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission.
1129
3
One example of this is an arts program that works with young people through
their creative engagement in the artsfrom dance to mural art to gardeningand uses
art as a way to connect young people to their community and to engagement in
community-change activities. The program includes an emphasis on the history and
practice of urban arts and often engages youth in community service, such as grafti
remediation (e.g., replacing gang-related tagging with public murals). The program
grew up out of the activist activities of youth working with the organization, and
represents an explicit programmatic link between the youth development and
community involvement work of the organization.
1130
1131
1132
Table 2
Inputs and outcome expectations level 1 individual (youth).
Goals
Develop leadership skills
Create opportunities
Heighten aspirations,
future orientation
Inputs
Outcomes
Education programs
College-oriented programs (trips to
colleges, scholarships, nancial
aid and application assistance)
Civic education activities
(discussion, eld trips, meetings
w/other groups)
Recreation programs
Youth development programs
(various substantive foci)
Provision of information
Safe sex
Job opportunities
Provision of safe space
Youth participation in decisionmaking, program direction
Short-term
Mid-term
Long-term
School completion
Higher educational
attainment (college)
Self control
Self discipline
Ability to engage in
teamwork
Ability to transfer skills to other settings
Teenage pregnancy
Crime
Gang involvement
Table 3
Inputs and outcome expectations level 2 family.
Outcomes
Goals
Inputs
Short-term
Mid-term
Long-term
the community more broadly, including the policies that affect and the
institutions that work with young people (see Fig. 1).
Certain presumed trajectories, beginning with specic inputs
toward specic outcomes, are clearer than others. For example,
engaging young people in particular tasks associated with organizing
campaigns helps them develop particular hard skills (e.g., how to
recruit, how to run a meeting, how to work with the media), which
leads to interim process goals (e.g., a mobilized constituency,
negotiation with target institutions), which in turn leads to some
Table 4
Inputs and outcome expectations level 3 community.
Goals
Accepting differences,
supporting diversity
Social justice, community
change, equity
Developing grass-roots leaders
Change balance of power
Inputs
Youth studying social movements
of different ethnic groups
(Black Panthers, Zapatistas)
Youth organizing projects
Criminalization of youth
Reproductive rights
and health
Police brutality
Immigrant rights
Community participation in
SWYC governance
Outcomes
Short-term
Mid-term
Long-term
Organizing skills
Organization
Mobilization
Communication
Media
Civic engagement of
young people
Youth development
outcomes
Self-condence
Develop cohorts of
volunteers and activists
1133
culture and operation, a set of driving values about young people, the
nature of relationships developed, and the nature and quality of young
people's engagement in the work of the organizationthat mediate
between input and outcome in this case. Given the broad diffusion of
community organizations as nodes of community practice and the
broad take-up of the basic conceptual assumptions and principles of
practice that guide their work in the U.S. and cross-nationally, there
may be much to learn from critical, systematic comparisons of such
practice and its likely effects. Such comparisons may help both to
clarifydescribe, compare, and distill like and divergent assumptions
and practice in different contextsthe complexity and ambiguity of
these kinds of interventions and to establish appropriate expectations
for interim effects and the broader, longer-term outcomes sought by
them.
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