The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change
The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change is a national forum in which leaders of innovative and promising efforts to improve conditions in poor communities can share lessons about their work and make progress on common challenges : The Roundtable’s goal is to strengthen the quality of policies, research, and practice aimed at improving outcomes for children, youth, families and communities in distressed areas, as well as to strengthen the practice in the community change field in a way that will lead to vibrant, racially equitable communities. They also support work on community revitalization efforts.
The Roundtable also examines the contribution of community-building strategies to improve social, economic, and civic outcomes for children, youth, families and neighborhoods; build the capacity of local governments and communities to work more effectively toward common goals; and explore and apply innovative learning methodologies to community-building topics. The Roundtable is known for its pioneering work on Theories of Change and community building evaluation.
That said, they have several publications and “process and practice tutorials” that could be useful to us.
- Resident-Centered Community Building, What Makes it Different?
- Complexity and Community Change, Managing Adaptively to Improve Effectiveness
- Voices From the Field, Identifying effective policies and practices.
They are currently focused on helping a variety of organizations apply the lessons from “Voices From the Field”, including learning in real time, developing better connections between neighborhoods and regions, and aligning public and private resources for community benefit.