20130820-122657-NY

We are seeking technical assistance in three key areas related to the planning and development of services at Fulton: 1) community assessment and engagement; 2) data and asset mapping; and 3) synthesis and partner (industry) engagement. The core of the planning process is to bring together residents, organizations, and institutions that are essential to the community’s life and prosperity to create this comprehensive place-based plan. Support and training in these areas would allow Osborne to avoid many of the foreseeable pitfalls of community development—including community resistance, service duplication and poor partner coordination—and learn from the evidence-based models that have proven effective across the nation, including those developed by LISC.
The community assessment and engagement process will consist of community visioning workshops and/or focus groups that are open and inclusive, including residents, members of local community-based organizations, government agencies, business owners, and other grassroots community groups. This process will allow us to reduce resistance and build a sense of community ownership for the project that we can continue to cultivate throughout the long life of our services at Fulton. Through this undertaking, we hope to identify a set of residents and staff at local institutions who can be allies and advisors on the project in the long term.
Data and asset mapping would both support community engagement activities and inform decisions regarding the development of programs at Fulton, the identification of partner organizations and the target population for the housing and social enterprise components of the project. These efforts would include analysis of local data to identify which groups are currently underserved in our community and which services are most in need. We also hope to produce an asset map of programs and services currently available to formerly incarcerated people and their families in the South Bronx to demonstrate that we are not duplicating existing services, but rather meeting needs that have long gone unmet. These data sets would be compiled into a report that would be used for outreach to community members and to solicit additional support for the project.
Technical assistance around synthesis and partner engagement would help us to identify and convene experts in community development and criminal justice to advise on the final stages of program planning and implementation. Technical assistance at this stage would also include support in identifying potential partners to co-locate their services at the Fulton site and evaluating their capacity. Once partners are selected, the technical assistance provider would also support Osborne and our new partners at Fulton in creating a plan for service coordination and measuring progress towards our goals.
The final product of these efforts will be a report that maps out a set of recommendations, developed collaboratively between Osborne and LISC (or another qualified technical assistance provider), that impact priority strategies, determine organizations appropriate for these strategies, identify opportunities and challenges and create specific early action steps. The report will focus on achieving the goal of transforming the former Fulton site into a community asset that supports justice-involved youth, adults and their families, and would be the roadmap to guide the development and implementation of services at the site.
Though we would welcome the technical assistance support of any equally experienced provider selected by BJA, Osborne chose to develop this preliminary plan with LISC because of their unique expertise in leading community development efforts across the country. LISC is one of very few technical assistance providers with long-standing experience building capacity with community-based organizations, developing affordable housing, and providing strategic planning for building communities based on a tested model.