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Program
Summary:
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This
national organization assists urban communities in the fields of
community development, health and human services, and education. CTAC focuses on developing leadership,
planning, and managerial expertise within community-based organizations,
school systems, collaborative partnerships, state and municipal
governments, and health and human service agencies. It provides capacity-building
assistance along with research and evaluation that has significant policy
implications.
CTAC has assisted more than 900 organizations,
coalitions, and public institutions in the past decade - with special
emphasis on New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. CTAC develops
leadership and builds organizational capacity in strategic planning,
governance, programming, constituency development, and resource
development. It helps build coalitions among groups, and collaboration
between community organizations and local governments. CTAC also provides
assistance to community foundations, human service agencies, and others
directly concerned with strengthening low-income communities.
As part of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation’s
program, “Intermediary Support for Organizing Communities,” CTAC
provides small grants and technical assistance to build the capacity,
sustainability and impact of nonprofits that are engaged in community organizing
work in low-income neighborhoods.
During 2007-8, six to eight small grants (maximum $20,000) will go
to organizations primarily located in the Northeast: Connecticut, Maine,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode
Island and Vermont. A new focus is on established community groups with
a track record for successful community organizing at the local level,
rather than on emerging groups that were supported in the past.
Priority is given to organizations that can demonstrate strong
constituent leadership, as well as capacity for internal administration
and management. Further, this program seeks organizations with the
interest and capacity to effectively partner with networks at the city,
state and/or national levels to promote broad-based social change
movements.
In working to address the conditions and root causes
of poverty, CTAC builds the capacity of organizations to respond to
increasing needs of some of the most severely disenfranchised groups –
including people with HIV or AIDS, children living in urban poverty,
refugees and immigrants, people living near toxic dumps, and battered
women. During the last ten years, CTAC has assisted more than 600 health
and human service organizations.
CTAC conducted a national initiative to (1) help
diverse communities throughout the United States develop effective,
comprehensive strategies to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and (2) shape
national policy that is more supportive of integrated care and prevention
strategies at the local level. In so doing, the project provided
field-tested examples for improving community health care and social
service planning - in the AIDS field, as well as with learnings
applicable to other health care arenas.
CTAC also has built the capacity of more than 30 AIDS
Consumer Advisory Boards throughout Massachusetts. These boards,
comprised of individuals with HIV infection or AIDS, have sought to
become affective consumer advocates by evaluating services, recommending
new programs, changing existing services and participating as board
members of social service agencies. CTAC has assisted the boards to
define the role of consumers in the delivery of services, increase their
skills as consumer advocates, establish priorities and strategies, and
build productive partnerships with the Department of Public Health, human
service agencies, and collaboratives throughout the state.
For
many children living in poverty, their un-addressed health and human
service issues pose obstacles to their success in school. As technical
assistance provider, CTAC has fostered efforts to increase students'
academic performance by addressing health and other non-educational needs
through a system of integrated family support services at school sites.
In
addition, CTAC provides ongoing training and technical assistance to
low-income neighborhood-based, resident-led organizations that are
organizing diverse immigrant or refugee communities to address health and
related issues.
In the area of
education, CTAC enables school districts to improve student
achievement through accountability, site and district planning, and
strategic data-informed management.
Working on site with teachers, parents, principals, administrators,
boards of education, business and community leaders -- as well as with
state education authorities - CTAC conducts capacity-building projects
that are comprehensive and often long-term, lasting three to five years.
CTAC's professional staff helps educators increase their capacities to be
effective and to implement improvements.
Based
on its experience with multiple school districts under receivership, and
with state interventions leading up to takeovers, CTAC also provides
technical assistance to state education authorities regarding state
takeovers and state interventions to improve student achievement. In addition, CTAC conducts research
studies addressing critical issues in education, in order to improve
practice and shape significant decisions at the regional, state, and national
levels. Recent studies have examined performance pay for teachers, state
takeovers of urban school districts, site-based management of schools,
and regional school to work initiatives.
CTAC also provides ongoing
training and technical assistance to low-income neighborhood-based,
resident-led organizations that are organizing diverse immigrant or
refugee communities to address health and related issues.
CTAC does a great deal of
evaluation, both summative and formative, internal and external,
depending upon the project. It
publishes reports on many of its efforts.
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