Boston Community Building Network

Overview
The mission of the Boston Community Building Network is to support collaborative, informed community building and systems change by:

offering the neutral ground of the Boston Foundation to provide opportunities for people to come together for mutual learning and dialogue;

extending the capacity of the foundation to listen to and interact with the many members of the Greater Boston Community;

building upon our community’s vast strengths and assets;

providing information for stakeholders and facilitating communication among groups;

catalyzing planning and action on public concerns; and

assisting groups in establishing programs and policies to meet their common goals.

Background
The Boston Foundation launched the Persistent Poverty project in 1989, as part of the Rockefeller Foundation's Community Planning and Action Program, a national, multi-city anti-poverty initiative. After conducting the first in-depth study of poverty in Boston, the Boston Persistent Poverty Project convened a diverse forty-three member strategy development group to develop consensus on a long-term approach to combating chronic poverty in Boston.
Interested not in identifying model programs but in developing the political will to sustain them, the strategy development group sponsored roundtable discussions with Asian-Americans, Latinos, Blacks, Whites, youth and single parents who represented those most affected by poverty in Boston. They also held focus groups in seven languages in ten ethnic communities. As this deep listening took place, the strategy development group became less willing to make policy recommendations on behalf of the poor and looked instead for a vocabulary based on the strengths and aspirations of community residents.
They created seven Guiding Principles for a New Social Contract, designed to capture the wisdom of the community. The principles are an integral part of an approach which seeks to build community in order to end poverty, and have been widely disseminated and adopted. Boston Community Building Network's Seven Guiding Principles for a New Social Contract
In 1998, the Persistent Poverty Project became Boston Community Building Network, and began to give the concepts which emerged from the community back to the community in the form of community-building tools.
Focus
The Boston Community Building Network currently consists of three major initiatives as well as serving a convening capacity at the Boston Foundation. The convening capacity allows the foundation to both listen to and touch base with its various constituencies and helps to stimulate collaboration and strategic alliances in response to opportunities and challenges that face our community.
The first major initiative and collaborative tool coordinated by the BCBN is the Boston Community Building Curriculum, which offers affordable, accessible, high quality training to grassroots leaders. There are three, three hour modules for each of the seven principles. The curriculum was designed to demystify community building skills, increase the ability of resident activists to do their work, create new links between grassroots leaders across neighborhood and across cause, and provide an additional source of income and potential career path for community residents who become workshop leaders.
The second tool is the Boston Children and Families Database which puts crucial local information into the hands of community residents for community-driven planning, advocacy and evaluation. Developed in collaboration with Northeastern University's Center for Academic Computing, the Community Action Information Network, Lotus Development Corporation, and many public agencies and community-based groups, it is an integrated database which links administrative data from several sources with a mapping tool. It contains 800 data points aggregated to the US Census’ tracts and block groups to allow for neighborhood-scale analysis.
The third tool is the Boston Indicators of Change, Progress and Sustainability project, an attempt to rethink shared goals and values, and to create a set of indicators to monitor and drive change on the neighborhood, city and regional levels. Developed with the City of Boston’s Sustainable Boston initiative and 250 Boston residents, the Indicators project collects and connects various data sources in ten areas: Civic Health, Economy, Education, Environment, Arts, Culture and Leisure, Housing, Technology, Public Health, Public Safety and Transportation.
The BCBN also focuses on issues such as technology access and community capacity building.
For more information, please contact:
Charlotte Kahn, Director
Boston Community Building Network
The Boston Foundation
One Boston Place, 24th floor
Boston, MA 02108
Tel.: 617-723-7415
Fax: 617-589-3616
E-Mail: cbk@tbf.org

Links:
The Boston Foundation: http://www.tbf.org/special_initiatives/overview.htm

The Boston Children and Families Database, The Boston Community Building Network, The Boston Foundation, nd
The Boston Children and Families Database was created to put crucial local information into the hands of community residents. In collaboration with the Lotus Development Corporation and Northeastern University’s Center for Academic Computing, the Boston Community Building Network has created a powerful tool to collect and analyze data that neighborhood residents can use to directly shape policies and programs to support community development, including data analysis, data presentation, mapping, primary data collection, and using the census. The Boston Persistent Poverty Project sponsors trainings for users and offers technical support so they can make the most effective use of the database.
(Topics: Technology, Boston Community Building Network)
The Boston Community Building Curriculum, The Boston Community Building Network, The Boston Foundation, nd
The Boston Community Building Curriculum is designed to introduce and strengthen specific skills, tools, and techniques that build the capacity of people who are working to improve their communities. The curriculum is organized around the Boston Community Building Network's Seven Guiding Principles for a New Social Contract http://www.tbf.org/special_initiatives/seven_principles.htm. Different grassroots community groups were asked to develop a curriculum around one of the seven guiding principles. Compiled together they make-up a hands-on guide for grassroots groups undertaking community building efforts.
(Topics: Community Building, Boston Community Building Network)
To Make Our City Whole: A Report on the Work of The Strategy Development Group of the Boston Persistent Poverty Project, The Boston Foundation, February 1994
This report challenges conventional thinking about the root causes of and solutions to persistent poverty. It is based on the simple premise that to eradicate persistent urban poverty, many of our traditional assumptions and practices will have to be transformed. In 1991, the Boston Persistent Poverty Project convened a 43-member Strategy Development Group to develop consensus on a long-term approach to combat chronic poverty in Boston. Group members convened a series of Roundtables attended by hundreds of Boston residents living or working in Boston's low-income communities, as well as a series of Focus Groups which involved more than 250 low-income Boston residents representing the city's ethnic and racial diversity. The Strategy Group learned that poverty in Boston has become deeper, more isolating and more persistent. It is disproportionately affecting children, women, families of color, linguistic minorities, and people with disabilities, largely due to barriers to education, training, capital for economic development, and jobs at living wages and good benefits. This report on the Group's work is intended to serve as a tool to reframe the policy debate, as a catalyst for dialogue, and as a call to action to the Greater Boston Community. Ordering info: Boston Community Building Network, The Boston Foundation, One Boston Place, 24th floor, Boston, MA 02108, (617) 723-7415.
(Topics: Community Building, Boston Community Building Network)

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	The Boston Children and Families Database, The Boston Community Building Network, The Boston Foundation, nd The Boston Children and Families Database was created to put crucial local information into the hands of community residents. In collaboration with the Lotus Development Corporation and Northeastern University’s Center for Academic Computing, the Boston Community Building Network has created a powerful tool to collect and analyze data that neighborhood residents can use to directly shape policies and programs to support community development, including data analysis, data presentation, mapping, primary data collection, and using the census. The Boston Persistent Poverty Project sponsors trainings for users and offers technical support so they can make the most effective use of the database. (Topics: Technology, Boston Community Building Network)
	The Boston Community Building Curriculum, The Boston Community Building Network, The Boston Foundation, nd The Boston Community Building Curriculum is designed to introduce and strengthen specific skills, tools, and techniques that build the capacity of people who are working to improve their communities. The curriculum is organized around the Boston Community Building Network's Seven Guiding Principles for a New Social Contract http://www.tbf.org/special_initiatives/seven_principles.htm. Different grassroots community groups were asked to develop a curriculum around one of the seven guiding principles. Compiled together they make-up a hands-on guide for grassroots groups undertaking community building efforts. (Topics: Community Building, Boston Community Building Network)
	To Make Our City Whole: A Report on the Work of The Strategy Development Group of the Boston Persistent Poverty Project, The Boston Foundation, February 1994 This report challenges conventional thinking about the root causes of and solutions to persistent poverty. It is based on the simple premise that to eradicate persistent urban poverty, many of our traditional assumptions and practices will have to be transformed. In 1991, the Boston Persistent Poverty Project convened a 43-member Strategy Development Group to develop consensus on a long-term approach to combat chronic poverty in Boston. Group members convened a series of Roundtables attended by hundreds of Boston residents living or working in Boston's low-income communities, as well as a series of Focus Groups which involved more than 250 low-income Boston residents representing the city's ethnic and racial diversity. The Strategy Group learned that poverty in Boston has become deeper, more isolating and more persistent. It is disproportionately affecting children, women, families of color, linguistic minorities, and people with disabilities, largely due to barriers to education, training, capital for economic development, and jobs at living wages and good benefits. This report on the Group's work is intended to serve as a tool to reframe the policy debate, as a catalyst for dialogue, and as a call to action to the Greater Boston Community. Ordering info: Boston Community Building Network, The Boston Foundation, One Boston Place, 24th floor, Boston, MA 02108, (617) 723-7415. (Topics: Community Building, Boston Community Building Network)