Mosaic: Building Connections, Broadening Networks

Building Connections, Broadening Networks

"Every culture—whether it is a workplace or a community—has its own foundational knowledge that members assume is common to everyone, like a set of bricks. But in fact we're all missing some of those bricks," says EDC Vice President Eric Jolly. "At EDC we can't possibly know everything about all of the people and communities we work with. We need to keep developing new networks and partnerships so that we can continue to build the foundational knowledge of our institution."

In most cases, EDC builds these partnerships by sending staff members into the field to meet with community leaders and local organizations. This past fall, EDC launched a new initiative to broaden our networking strategies by bringing the field to us. "EDC's board and senior leadership have been discussing ways to broaden our partnerships, particularly within Latino communities," says Joanna Jones, EDC's director of human resources. "Basically, we created a professional development conference for ourselves by inviting Latino leaders from the United States and South America here for focused working sessions with project staff."

This year's Visiting Practitioners Program (VPP) was the latest iteration of a long-running EDC initiative, which was originally designed as a vehicle for recruiting new staff from diverse communities. In prior years, we brought young or mid-level professionals to EDC and provided professional development and mentoring to them. This year, we brought in noted researchers and community leaders who could guide our own research and outreach efforts.

"The original VPP was designed to broaden the diversity of people who form our work—our employees," says Jolly. "This year's program was designed to also broaden the diversity of people who inform and benefit from our work. We want to expand the networks who serve on our advisory boards, who attend our focus groups and community meetings, who help us set our agenda and establish priorities."

During the three-day program in October, the visiting practitioners directed a series of workshops and strategy sessions. They presented their research and experience to EDC staff and then worked in focused sessions to brainstorm emerging opportunities and innovative solutions. The working sessions covered a wide range of topics, from the high rates of asthma among Latino populations in urban neighborhoods to the importance of spirituality in rural schools in the Southwest. Beyond the United States, sessions focused on economic and immigration patterns in South America, international school health programs, and model micro-enterprise projects in rural villages. Several sessions ended with broad outlines for new collaborative proposals.

"There was a great sense of reciprocity to the event," says Jolly. "EDC gives and gets as much as our visiting researchers do. We all came away with expanded networks, broader horizons, shared visions, and a sense of collegiality."

Ultimately, the success of the program will be proven in EDC's future work: Do our new advisory boards reflect our expanded vision? Have new partners been included in our projects? Do we have new audiences and dissemination strategies for our work?

The same measures apply to the visiting practitioners themselves, who left EDC with a host of new connections and ideas. "The VPs never fail to request a reunion," says Jolly, "which tells me that they have also built a community among themselves."

Visiting Practitioners Profiled:

Vicente Llamas

Bringing meaningful mathematics and science instruction to Latino and Native American youth

For the last 15 years, Dr. Llamas has been president or co-president of the New Mexico Partnership for Mathematics and Science Education, a nonprofit organization that helps schools and universities, businesses, and government laboratories collaborate across the state of New Mexico. He is currently working with a partnership of colleges and K–12 consortia to create a pre-service program in a rural college in northern New Mexico. The idea is to build a pre-service to post-university continuum ensuring quality Hispanic and Native American teachers that are specifically trained to address the special needs of rural northern New Mexico.
Dr. LLamas has also led the Rural Systemic Initiative over four states (Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico), wherein multiple educational and other jurisdictions learned to work together and share resources for mathematics and science reform. He has extensive experience working with minority populations, particularly the Hispanic youth of New Mexico. He has taught high school science and university physics at the undergraduate and graduate level.

On his visit to EDC Dr. Llamas spoke about the challenge of bringing people together across cultural differences to create quality learning experiences for young children. He spoke of the importance of developing what he calls "place-based" curriculum—that is, teaching strategies and materials that resonate with local cultural traditions, experiences, and values.

On developing curriculum:
The idea of spirituality is critical for both Native American and Latino communities. For instance, with the Navajo Nation we talked about astronomy by examining how traditional people measured the various changes in the sun by how slivers of light crossed etchings in the rock. This connected science observation with Native systems of thinking.

We used cultural and historical material from a broad enough range of areas so that most of the people who used the materials had a hook for their students . . . so there was something familiar, something meaningful. This takes a lot of work, but it creates a richer curriculum.

On the VPP:
It has been a wonderful opportunity for us to step back from our work. Every day, we're in the midst of the trees. This break allowed us to see the forest, to reflect on the bigger picture, the lessons learned.

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David Valenzuela

More than 30 years of economic development and democracy-building in Latin America and the Caribbean

David Valenzuela is president of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), an independent grant-making agency of the U.S. government. Mr. Valenzuela has extensive experience working in Latin America. He first joined the IAF in 1979, serving at various times as representative for Peru and Bolivia, senior representative for the Andean Region, regional director for the Southern Cone and Brazil, and regional director for Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. He took a leave of absence from 1990 to1995 to reestablish and direct the U.S. Peace Corps in Chile. Previously, he served as the Latin American program officer for the international Secretariat for Volunteer Service based in Geneva, Switzerland.

He spoke to the EDC community about his experiences with fostering economic development and democratic institutions in Latin America.

On evaluation:
You can't have a value-free program evaluation. The goal is to make the values explicit. We bring grantees together to discuss the goals and the methodology. We're helping them take on the instrument as their own.

Grassroots community groups are intensely interested in knowing, Are we doing what we set out to do? How well are we serving our community? Evaluation is not just an ex post facto process, not just an externally imposed one. It's a way for groups to measure their progress and make adjustments. After all, the local communities are the biggest losers when the project fails. There is little risk for us; we move on to other projects and places. But they can lose their homes, their cattle, their livelihoods.

On the VPP:
It's rare that I get a chance to do this kind of thing—to sit back and distill the essence of our work. And it's rare that I encounter an organization like EDC that is determined to be the best, and that will take risks to become better. It is risky to open your doors and invite people in and to give them carte blanche to share their thoughts and reactions.

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Gloria Rodriguez

Enriching Latino family life for 30 years

Dr. Gloria Rodriguez is president and founder of AVANCE (www.avance.org), a nonprofit organization based in Texas whose mission is to build the self-esteem, self-confidence, and competence of low-income Latino parents and children within a family and community context. Its areas of focus are parenting, early childhood education, and family support. Under Dr. Rodriguez's leadership, AVANCE has grown from a 3-person organization with a $100,000 budget in 1973 to a $26 million organization employing more than 400 people and serving 20,000 individuals in 80 family centers today.

Dr. Rodriguez has served on numerous national and international boards and committees, including the Presidential Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. She has served as a consultant to PBS on such well-known programs as Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood and Sesame Street. She is the author of Raising Nuestros Ninos: Bringing Up Latino Children in a Bicultural World (Simon and Shuster).

On her recent visit to EDC, she shared her beliefs about working with Latino families:
We don't believe in sitting behind the desk and saying, "Come and get it." We are located right in the community. If people say no, we keep on knocking. We connect these parents with all the resources in the community and with one another. All of a sudden they made a link, a friend that they can go to with their problems.

If you want to get families involved, ask, "Do you want to help your child?" In the process of helping that child you touch the heart and souls of the parents.

On the VPP:
I have new ideas for taking the AVANCE model and expanding it to other areas and other parts of the country.

If we [Latinos] are going to be the largest group in America, we need to develop Latino leaders. We were very excited to hear about EDC's Youth Employment Summit planned for next year in Mexico.

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Luz Claudio

Mobilizing Latino communities around issues of environmental health

Dr. Luz Claudio balances a research focus on environmental medicine with leadership in community outreach, education, and health policy development in New York City and in Latin America. She is an Associate Professor of Community and Preventive Medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where she directs the Community Outreach and Education Program, connecting community groups with medical researchers to combat local health problems. Most recently, she worked with students to document and map asthma hospitalization rates in New York City, producing a report that focused widespread public attention on the problem. Her work extends to developing countries in Latin America, where she directs an international training program in environmental and occupational health.

On her visit to EDC, Dr. Claudio shared her research methods and findings on the childhood asthma study, as well as her thoughts on community-based health research and outreach.

On mentoring girls in science:
Our program for girls is built around community-relevant environmental research. We design hands-on experiments about community health and research, like testing water quality in the Hudson River. Environmental health is a great way to approach integrated science education because the science is hands-on and relevant to daily life. The kids get to practice science the way real scientists do.

On the VPP:
For me, it was a great experience—I learned so much. Now, I have the vocabulary to communicate how much educational development I am actually doing in my work and in my community. These sessions validated a lot of what I was doing because I didn't know there were people out there like you who were doing similar work and could collaborate with me. That's very exciting.

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Sergio Meresman

International cooperation in times of crisis

Dr. Sergio Meresman is a social psychologist who specializes in community development and health promotion. He is a former senior associate with EDC’s Health and Human Development Programs and is currently an EDC partner in Latin America. Dr. Meresman is a consultant with more than 10 years of experience in planning, implementation, and evaluation of community health, education, and social development projects. He is currently working for the Uruguayan National Administration of Public Education on improving health education in primary schools, and CEADU, an Uruguayan NGO specializing in local development. Until recently, he was a senior advisor to the International Cooperation Unit at the Ministry of Human Development in Argentina. He has also served as a consultant to the Human Development Network of the World Bank, the Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, and the British Council.

On his visit to EDC, Dr. Meresman addressed the social, educational, and health ramifications of the economic collapses in Argentina and Uruguay, both for local communities and internationally in terms of migration patterns. He also identified emerging international public health issues, including food security, infectious disease, violence, and challenges to mental health.

On the economic crisis:
Within these and other Latin American countries, the wide disparities in income and in access to education, drinkable water, infant mortality, and maternal mortality are staggering.

In these countries, schools are the last place where the state still has a presence, so they are the institutions providing basic services, such as nutrition, health, and social services. In Buenos Aires, for example, school feeding programs expanded from 400,000 children in 1994 to 1,624,000 in 1997. Drop-out rates are also soaring—in Argentina, almost 33,000 children left school as a consequence of the economic crisis.

On the VPP:
As we talk about our experience, the word "friendship" keeps coming up. And friendship is good for your health, it is an important protective factor. In one of our school health projects in Argentina, we asked students and teachers what made them feel good, and they all talked about friendship.

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