CONNECTCommunity: Where strong families are made
Through hands-on workshops and trainings, Child360 will empower parents and community members to advocate on behalf of their families to realize the changes they want to see in their community.
Please describe the activation your organization seeks to launch.
Child360 will offer hands-on workshops and trainings to parents and community members throughout South Los Angles, East Los Angeles, and Antelope Valley. Our goal is to leverage our expertise in mobilizing community members to become more civically engaged. We work together to empower Angelenos to fight for their families and communities, resulting in stronger neighborhoods and a brighter future for their children.
Which of the CONNECT metrics will your activation impact?
Adults getting sufficient social & emotional support
Government responsiveness to residents’ needs
Rates of volunteerism
Will your proposal impact any other LA2050 goal categories?
LA is the best place to LEARN
LA is the healthiest place to LIVE
In what areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?
East LA
South LA
Antelope Valley
How will your activation mobilize Angelenos?
Advocate for policy
Digital organizing or activism
Trainings and/or in-person engagements
Create new tools or technologies for greater civic/political engagement
Increase participation in political processes
Influence individual behavior
Connect Angelenos with impactful volunteer opportunities
Describe in greater detail how your activation will make LA the best place to CONNECT?
Child360 (formerly Los Angeles Universal Preschool) works in partnership with families, local residents and community groups to build, support, and improve early education in Los Angeles County. Our activation will be a transparent process that allows community members in East LA, South LA, and Antelope Valley to identify, develop, and implement community-driven strategies that maximize engagement and empower Angelenos to create communities that truly give children the best start.
Child360’s Community Engagement team will facilitate community meetings to ensure collaboration between local agencies and their stakeholders that include families, residents, business-owners, neighborhood councils, and volunteers. Child360 will collaborate with partner groups to assess the capacities and gaps of the community partnerships and to develop plans to build capacity in areas where assistance is needed. Types of assistance could include:
* Trainings for local trainers on the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s Strengthening Families™ Protective Factors (SFPF) Framework, which focuses on five factors of parental resilience, social connections, concrete support in times of need, knowledge of parenting and child development, and socioemotional competence of children
* Trainings on advocacy strategies and tactics and provision of tools to increase constituents’ capacity to improve government responsiveness (past examples include a Community Ambassador Toolkit and an online Voter Voice platform that helps local constituents understand and flex their power in local, state, and national politics)
* Trainings to help community partnerships develop skills to identify and apply for funding at the local level
* Organizing of annual community festivals that convene local service providers, families, residents, and volunteers
* Volunteer mobilization community partnership activities
* Media engagement and promotion of community partnerships
* Other support activities identified by the local community partnerships
Child360 will also oversee data collection and assessment of the activation, and provide regular reports to the community partnerships to learn from and develop plans to improve their work. Child360 will document community partnership participant information and attendance and will work with the community partnerships to identify performance measures, which include metrics that are most meaningful to the communities.
How will your activation engage Angelenos to make LA the best place to CONNECT
Child360’s will engage the communities of East LA, South LA, and Antelope Valley. This activation allows disenfranchised and marginalized communities to participate in collective community driven implementation. Child360 will build on its successful framework to support resident/stakeholder engagement and advocacy through community partnership. Successful stakeholder engagement and advocacy activities include: Parent Cafes, Strengthening Families™ trainings, Advocacy workshops, and Train-the-Trainers. A trained delegate from each community will facilitate train-the-trainer advocacy trainings. Delegates will be trained on how to develop outreach strategies to engage schools, residents, and other stakeholders. Delegates will also be invited to participate in visits with elected officials. Civic engagement trainings will build on these efforts by offering information topics requested by the communities. These may include: public transportation, immigration, education, and access to healthy food. In addition, Community Partnerships may use one of their meetings to invite elected officials to attend and address community issues. This model is based on the success of Senator Hertzberg collaborating with Child360 and the Northeast Valley Partnership to host a community breakfast to connect with and hear from community members. Finally, Child360 will design feedback mechanisms to ensure efforts are conducted in accordance with community partners’ intentions and goals.
Please explain how you will define and measure success for your activation.
The community partnerships will develop goals to define their success as well as work plans with measurable objectives and implementation timelines, which will allow Child360 to align activities and technical support with their goals.
Child360 will conduct focus groups and devise survey instruments to analyze data for community partnerships to reflect upon, learn, and improve. Child360 will use two sustainability-oriented frameworks, Empowerment Evaluation and Appreciative Inquiry, and train community partnerships to incorporate data use, regular reflection, and learning into their processes. Both frameworks emphasize the use of democratic participation and collaborative strategizing to advance existing programs. In combination, these frameworks enhance self-sufficiency. Empowerment Evaluation involves the use of evaluation concepts, techniques, and findings to foster ongoing improvement. Appreciative Inquiry examines, identifies, and further develops an organization's’ potential to create a better future by focusing on assets and strengths. Both formative and summative evaluation strategies will help identify successes and challenges and inform the iterative improvement process of the community partnerships. The evaluation methodology will include: focus groups with community partnerships, participant feedback forms provided at the end of every meeting, and participant profile surveys to capture demographic data.
Where do you hope this activation or your organization will be in five years?
Child360 hopes that the people it trains in this activation will have sustainable skills to lend to their communities and in five years, these community partnerships will thrive independently. This activation will have a ripple effect as participants forge stronger relationships and empower others in their community to become a part of the political and community development process, rather than remain bystanders. One of the outcomes of the activation should be that community partnerships in these communities become self-sustaining and look to Child360 as a trusted partner with expertise in training and technical assistance, rather than rely on it for on-the-ground coordination. Child360 hopes to study its success and pass on this information to other organizers and other communities so that young children’s status and well-being will be elevated everywhere in Los Angeles.