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Mission Staff BICEP Presencing Institute Reflective Practice History Fellows GainShare dropping knowledge Digital Stories Contact Faculty New Orleans MIT@Lawrence community problem-solving Students Green Hub NEON? DUSP@NOLA

ELIAS Fellows’ Projects Springfield

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About UsThe Community Innovators Lab (CoLab) is a center for research and practice within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). CoLab supports the development and use of knowledge from excluded communities to build cooperation, deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, inform policy, support creative problem-solving, mobilize community assets, and generate shared wealth. We believe that community knowledge can drive powerful innovation to help make markets an arena for supporting social justice. ,

Working toward a world in which marginalized people put their assets to work to transform politics and the market and create sustainable cities.

CoLab facilitates the interchange of knowledge and resources between MIT and community organizations in order to inspire and support innovation across all sectors. We engage students to be practitioners of this approach to community change and sustainability

Our work focuses in three areas: democratic engagement, shared wealth generation and urban sustainability.

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History The Community Innovators Lab has its roots in the MIT Community Fellows Program, a 25-year effort of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) to support community activists’ learning by bringing them to the MIT campus for coursework, learning and building networks. The Community Fellows Program evolved into the Center for Reflective Community Practice (CRCP), which drew on the development expertise of DUSP faculty and students, and used reflective practice to help communities and leaders "know what they know" in order to improve the lives of those most marginalized by our society.

CRCP worked to mine the knowledge of residents in low income and marginalized communities, for their own use, believing that knowledge emerging from the daily effort to preserve and strengthen communities, holds critical lessons for re-imagining how to create a fair, just and equitable society. Click here for the CRCP website.

Today, the Community Innovators Lab is expanding the original CRCP mission. Building on the principles of reflective practice, we seek to leverage a range of community assets, including community knowledge. We work to develop innovative experiments and prototyped approaches to addressing social, economic, and political challenges.

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Contact Us

Phone: 617-253-3216Fax: 617-258-6515Email:

For a map of our office location at MIT, click here: http://whereis.mit.edu/map-jpg?mapterms=7-307&mapsearch=go

Community Innovators LabMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyBuilding/Room 7-30777 Massachusetts AvenueCambridge, MA 02139

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People Staff

Amber Bradley, Program Director for Economic EmpowermentAmber has several years of experience working as a domestic violence counselor with grassroots organizations in Oregon and Colorado. From 2002 to 2003, through the support of a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, Amber researched women’s responses to domestic violence in Argentina, Kenya, Hungary, and Ireland. Recently, she engaged in work in Gujarat, India, addressing the human rights of Dalit or “untouchables.” Amber’s work is motivated by a dedication to human rights and social equity. Viewing her work through the lenses of race, class, gender, exclusion, power, and accountability, she is deeply interested in issues of power dynamics—from the interpersonal to the structural. Amber holds a BA degree in Psychology from Reed College and an MCP degree from MIT.

Dayna L. Cunningham, Executive Director Dayna has over 20 years of experience as an attorney working in democratic engagement and social justice, in philanthropy, and in development. She was a voting rights lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, litigating cases in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and elsewhere in the South. As an associate director at the Rockefeller Foundation, she funded initiatives that examined the relationship between democracy and race, changing racial dynamics, and new conceptions of race in the United States, as

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well as innovation in civil rights legal work. She also worked as an officer for the New York City Program at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. While associated with Public Interest Projects, a nonprofit project management and philanthropic consulting firm based in New York City, she managed foundation collaboratives on social justice issues. Most recently, Dayna directed the ELIAS Project, an MIT-based collaboration among business, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and government that seeks to use processes of profound innovation to advance economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Dayna holds an MBA degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management,,a JD degree from New York University School of Law, and a BA degree from Harvard and Radcliff Colleges.

Gary Thornton, Program CoordinatorGary manages finance , logistics and operations at CoLab. Before joining CoLab, he worked for the New York City Department of Education as a Business Development Analyst. He was responsible for the marketing, communication, and organization of borough-wide new small school informational sessions. As a former Americorps volunteer on the South Side of Chicago and National Project Manager for City Year Inc., an international service organization, he organized several large-scale service projects and training events for thousands of volunteers, students, and donors. Gary earned his BS in Psychology from University of Illinois in 2000, and will receive his MBA in 2008.

Dulari Tahbildar, Program Director for Democratic EngagementIn 2004-2005, Dulari helped to start up a 6-12 public school in the Bronx, worked in fundraising and development at The Brotherhood/Sister Sol youth development organization in Harlem, NY, and researched education policy at The Urban Institute in Washington, DC. Soon after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Dulari became

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involved in recovery and rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. Dulari’s interests lie at the intersection of public education, community organizing, and community development Her master’s thesis explored educational equity in the rebuilding of public education in post-Katrina New Orleans, with a focus on black activism, the politics of community change, and community building. Dulari holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Policy and Urban Studies from Brown University and a Master of City Planning degree from MIT.

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Fellows:CoLab Fellows are leaders in community-level social justice innovation from around the world. They bring knowledge and experience from extraordinary practice working with marginalized communities in many parts of the globe. Fellows come to CoLab to advance a specific project connected with CoLab’s mission. We provide a learning community to exchange ideas with other community innovators, faculty and community partners; facilitate links into resources in the wider MIT community and offer working space for Fellows to advance their projects, including through opportunities to audit courses. With MIT faculty, CoLab Fellows, community partners and others, CoLab promotes engaged scholarship and 360 degree knowledge transfer between the academy and innovative community practitioners. At the culmination of the Fellowship, each fellow produces a synthesis of her/his learning, in a form of her/his choosing, that can be shared with other fellows, MIT, and the larger social justice community.

Becky Buell [GARY—bio & photo]Becky Buell joins the CoLab Fellowship to help develop the Green Hub, a project focused on the interrelated social and economic issues of poverty-reduction, finance, employment, education and beyond, that are necessary to bring about comprehensive and equitable green transformation in cities. Becky’s focus will be on building partnerships with organizations in 3-4 cities in the southern Hemisphere as key participants in the Hub's activities and networks. She will also work to develop links with the City of London, and UK organizations, businesses and universities working on transition to equitable low carbon futures.

Becky comes to Colab from Oxfam GB where she worked as Senior Advisor for Strategy and Innovation. She advised Oxfam's board and directors on organizational strategy and innovation, and managed a portfolio of projects, primarily relating to cross-sector collaboration on climate change, renewable energy, and sustainable

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supply chains. Until 2006, she held senior management positions for Oxfam in Central America and Mexico, and in Oxfam's Campaigns and Policy Division. She developed Oxfam's work on the private sector's role in poverty reduction, including the Oxfam-Unilever study on the company's "poverty footprint" in Indonesia and a range of cross-sectoral partnerships for poverty reduction. Becky was an MIT-ELIAS Fellow in 2006-7 and continues to work with the ELIAS network on supporting large organizations and networks in developing their capacity to innovate. For information on Becky’s work, click here.

Lee Farrow, 2007-2008 Research AffiliateLee Farrow’s CoLab Fellowship has involved capturing collective voices of residents and community organizations from Boston neighborhoods, to uncover and analyze lessons learned from three decades of neighborhood-building efforts. Lee also works with The Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc., researching housing displacement issues in Harlem and chronicling , documenting and identifing lessons from the Harlem Children’s Zone’s early start-up phase. Prior to joining CoLab, Lee spent eleven years developing and implementing HCZ’s Community Pride Project. For more on Lee’s work , click here.

Judith Flick Judith Flick joins CoLab’s fellowship program to build our partnership with the Presencing

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Institute and develop the second cohort of the ELIAS project. Judith was born in Greece, is of Dutch nationality and presently is working in South Africa. She has more than 15 years experience in social development, mainly in Latin America and southern Africa. Judith holds an MA in Social Anthropology from the Leiden University in The Netherlands, where she majored in Gender studies. This was followed by a post-masters degree in Management for Business Administration. In 2006 she enrolled in the ELIAS Project (Emerging Leaders Innovate Across Sectors), a joint leadership development initiative of a multi-sectoral group of global organizations. Hosted by MIT in Boston, this 12-month course is based on the U-theory or “presencing”. Over the past 6 years, Judith has worked as a Regional Director for the Oxfam Great Britain first in South America and later for southern Africa, leading considerable change management processes. In 2004, she became the lead for Oxfam GB on HIV/AIDS globally, establishing a Global Centre of Learning (GCoL) on HIV/AIDS in Pretoria. GCoL’s purpose was to define Oxfam GB’s HIV/AIDS policy and to facilitate learning about HIV/AIDS responses across the globe in search of more profound and lasting answers for people living in poverty. In partnership with the Presencing Institute, led by Dr. C.O Scharmer, she has initiated and is co-facilitating a cross-sectoral group of leaders in Zambia, who are forging innovative ways to induce systemic changes that could change the present course of the HIV and AIDS pandemic. For more on Judith’s work, click here.

Sebastiao Mendonca Ferreira, Visiting ScholarSebastiao, is a Brazilian who has lived in Peru most of his life. In the 80s he managed a Peruvian NGO focused on rural and urban development, and in the 90s he became an independent consultant in strategic planning for cities and major institutions. He has worked with national and local governments throughout Latin America, as well as foundations, microfinance institutions, companies and international development

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organizations, with a diversity of constituencies, such as peasants, public authorities, businessmen and development practitioners. Sebastiao’s work involves development of cognitive methods for advanced, community-based knowledge-capture, and creating mechanisms for detecting and promoting innovative initiatives in communities. He has written six books in the last 20 years, including I “Creacion de Futuros,” A study of strategic planning in communities. His present inquiry is how to stimulate innovation in communities, primarily in disenfranchised sectors, and how to promote institutional support to creative people. For more on Sebastiao’s work click here.

Ilma Paixao, CRCP Community Fellow/Founder, Handeira Linens and LaceIlma trained in Brazil as a nursing assistant and owned and ran a cleaning business. For the past 20 years she has been involved in community-building volunteer work in her home town of Framingham, Massachusetts. A long-standing member of the public school outreach and school development committees, Ilma also works on Framingham Town Hall anti- violence initiatives. Ilma recently directed the “Brazilian Women Helping Each Other Live Healthier,” a cancer screening and community empowerment project for Brazilian immigrant women. Most recently, Ilma earned the "Rising Star" award at the Center for Women’s Enterprise in Boston for her work in founding “Handeira Linens and Lace,” an international business that supports community development in northern Brazil among the indigenous Xukuru people. Ilma works in partnership with the Xukuru indigenous people marketing their fine handmade lace women's clothing and houseware to create a sustainable livelihood that also preserves their health, their land, and their cultural identity. In addition to business development, Ilma has helped the Xukuru start several social initiatives in their community, including eye and vision exams for lacemakers, computer classes for teenagers, a farmer's seed bank, and a community-operated general store. For more on Ilma’s work, click here.

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Amritha Subramanian, CoLab Emerging Leadership FellowAmritha works to link CoLab with droppingknowledge, an organization devoted to using new media platforms to enable the global public to ask and answer questions, exchange ideas, and start initiatives around pressing issues. Her work focuses on building out the questions and dialogue which are often at the root of an issue or project. She graduated springing 2007 from UCLA with degrees in economics and political science, and has worked in several communities in San Diego, Los Angeles, and New Delhi, India around the issues of politics, healthcare, organizing, and education. For more on Amritha’s work, click here.

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Faculty

Xavier de Souza Briggs, Associate Professor of Urban Planning. Xav is a sociologist whose work centers on racial and ethnic diversity, democratic problem solving, and inequality in cities around the globe. He is the founding director of the Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT and of Working Smarter in Community Development, two online resources for “self-directed” learning by people and institutions worldwide. His latest book, The Geography of Opportunity: Race and Housing Choice in Metropolitan America (Brookings Institution Press, 2005), won the 2007 Paul Davidoff Award, given every two years to the top book in planning with a focus on racial and economic justice. His next major work, Democracy as Problem Solving: Civic Capacity in Communities across the Globe, will be published by the MIT Press in 2008. Xav teaches courses in collaborative problem solving, strategy and management, the community development potential in “greening” cities, and the history and politics of planning as a practice. Beyond his nationally awarded research on young people, cities, segregation, and opportunity, he has served as a community planner in the South Bronx and other inner-city areas, a senior advisor to the White House and Congress while at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and a consultant to leading national and international organizations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank. He spent six years on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Xav has been an expert witness in civil rights litigation and an editorial board member of leading journals in housing policy, urban sociology, and planning. He is

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a member of the Aspen Roundtable on Community Change, the governing boards of public policy analysis and housing advocacy organizations, and other groups. He was raised in the Caribbean, received his BA degree from Stanford University, an MA Degree from Harvard University, and a Ph.D., degree in Sociology from Columbia University. Xav and his family live in Boston’s culturally and economically diverse Dorchester neighborhood.

Lorlene Hoyt, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning.Lorlene is an urban planning scholar, educator, and practitioner who believes that planning scholarship (“inquiry”) should be useful to practitioners on the ground and that planning “practice” should inform and advance scholarship. Organized according to these beliefs, Lorlene’s online portfolio deliberately positions planning education (“instruction”) in the center, because she sees the classroom as an effective bridge between planning scholarship and practice.

Lorlene, who is a faculty member of the HCED Group, the UIS Group, and is also the project director for MIT@Lawrence—a HUD-funded and remote university- community partnership between the Institute and the City of Lawrence, Massachusetts. As part of this initiative, Lorlene and Langley Keyes, also a faculty member of the HCED Group) have co-taught what is commonly known as the Lawrence Practicum (11.423 – Information, Asset Building, and the Immigrant City) for more than five years. Students who take this service-learning practicum strategically build earlier student contributions by strengthening existing relationships with community leaders and residents to increase affordable housing opportunities in a city where homeownership rates are less than half of state and national averages.

With training and experience in both City Planning and Landscape Architecture, Lorlene’s

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core interests include community economic development, downtown revitalization, planning pedagogy, and spatial information technologies. Her research has been published in academic journals such as Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, the Journal of Planning Education and Research, Economic Affairs, International Journal of Public Administration, Geography Compass, Cityscape, and the Journal of Urban Technology.

Lorlene continually keeps one foot in the world of planning practice as co-founder and general partner of Urban Revitalizers, a women- and minority-owned real estate development and planning consultancy located in Boston, Massachusetts. Before joining MIT, she supervised the Crime Analysis and Mapping unit at the Philadelphia Police Department and worked as a senior planner for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Lorlene and her wife reside in Boston’s eclectic Bay Village neighborhood with their two lively Ethiopian American children. To view Lorlene’s portfolio, visit: http://www.urbanrevitalization.net

Gus Newport, MLK Visiting Scholar in Urban Studies and Planning (2006-2008)

Eugene “Gus” Newport is an MLK Fellow at MIT and a program consultant to the Vanguard Public Foundation and the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation.  Gus is assisting these foundations in community planning, organizing and policy development in the recovery work to re-build New Orleans, LA.  At MIT, he is working on a Practicum with a neighborhood in North Springfield, MA and a studio to improve the quality of life through planning and developing housing, economic development and improving the public education system.

Gus was the Executive Director of the Institute of Community Economics and the former General Manager of radio station KPFA in Berkeley, the oldest listener sponsored radio station in the country.  He directed the Community Building Support Center for the Urban Strategies Council. He is the former Executive Director of the Partnership for Neighborhood Initiative (PNI) Palm Beach County, FL and the former Executive Director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), Boston, MA.

Gus also served as Mayor of Berkeley, CA from 1979-1986.  During his tenure he served on the advisory board of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and chaired the sub-committees on Education and Employment. 

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Gus’s areas of work are neighborhood planning and development and economic development.  He has worked in many capacities for federal, state, county and municipal governments, nonprofit agencies, foundations and the private sector.  He has lectured at numerous colleges and universities and served on several national policy boards and United Nation committees.  He is a member of the Board of Overseers of the Graduate Program in Community Economic Development at Southern New Hampshire University, a member of the board of the Project Against Violence and the board of the Algebra Project.  Gus served as the Vice-President from the U.S. to the World peace Council 1980-1986.

Karl Seidman, Senior Lecturer in Economic Development, Karl is an economic development practitioner with 25 years of experience working at a community development corporation, serving in state and local government, and managing a consulting practice. His interests include local economic development strategy, development finance, public-purpose real estate development, and commercial district revitalization. Karl’s experience includes the preparation of economic development plans and strategies; the design, management, and evaluation of development finance programs; and the financing and supervision of complex development projects. During his tenure in Massachusetts state government, he authored laws that established two Massachusetts business finance agencies, instituted financing programs, helped capitalize a $120 million state real estate finance and development authority, and oversaw implementation planning for the redevelopment of the Gloucester State Fish Pier and Fort Devens. As a consultant, Karl has prepared more than 20 economic development and downtown revitalization plans; completed market and feasibility studies for numerous development projects; and evaluated federal, state, and local government and foundation initiated economic and community development programs. His publications include the textbook, Economic Development Finance and

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Revitalizing Commerce for American Cities: A Practitioner’s Guide to Urban Main Street Programs. Karl is a board member of the Northeast Economic Developers Association and of Boston Main Streets Foundation and serves on advisory committees for the Urban Markets Initiative and National New Markets Fund. He teaches Economic Development Finance, Economic Development Planning, Revitalizing Urban Main Streets, and Economic Development Planning Skills (IAP). Karl has an MPP degree from Harvard University.

J. Phillip Thompson, Associate Professor of Urban Politics.Phil is an urban planner and a political scientist. In the early 1990s, Phil worked as deputy general manager of the New York Housing Authority, and as director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing Coordination. He is a frequent advisor to trade unions in their efforts to work with immigrant and community groups across the United States. Phil’s most recent academic work includes a 2004 review of public health interventions in poor black communities (written with Arline Geronimus) published in the Du Bois Review, entitled “To Denigrate, Ignore, or Disrupt: The Health Impact of Policy-induced Breakdown of Urban African American Communities of Support”; an article entitled “Judging Mayors” in the June 2005 issue of Perspectives on Politics; and a recent book, Double Trouble: Black Mayors, Black Communities, and the Struggle for Deep Democracy, published by Oxford University Press. Following Hurricane Katrina, Phil coordinated MIT’s technical assistance efforts in the Gulf. He holds a PhD degree in Political Science from the City University of New York Graduate Center, an MUP degree from Hunter College, and a BA degree in Sociology from Harvard University.

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Students[PHOTOS -GARY]

Molly EkerdtMolly is working with Housing, Community, and Economic Development (HCED) faculty to help them answer the question: “How has HCED helped communities to thrive?” Through in-depth interviews, convenings, and analyses, Molly will support faculty members in reflecting upon and understanding the impact of their work on communities over time.

Carlos Espinoza-ToroCarlos is conducting research on, and for, the Latino Community Credit Union (LCCU) headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. His research will result in a report that offers ways for the LCCU to secure capitalization by developing strategic partnerships with institutions that have vital interests in the communities where LCCU currently operates or is planning to expand. Carlos will also explore whether LCCU’s business model could be replicated successfully in other cities with large immigrant worker populations.

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Cyd McKenna Cyd is researching and documenting living examples of shared wealth generation and cooperatives, including the Neighborhood Entrepreneur Program in New York City, Market Creek Plaza in San Diego, California, and Brightwood Health Clinic in Springfield, Massachusetts. These cases will be adapted into educational materials and shared with CoLab partner organizations and will be accessible on our website.

[PICTURE TO BE INSERTED] Mike Norman

Mike is conducting research on the innovative uses of technology to support organizing, movement building, and the spectrum of voter engagement activities.  This research will help inform our strategies on how to use technology to deepen civic participation within black communities beyond election cycles. 

Amit Sarin

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Amit is researching strategies to leverage opportunities for collaborative ownership and wealth creation for people of color in working-class and poor communities, which have been created due to the massive effort in New York City to become greener.

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ProjectsBlack Intensive Civic Engagement Project (BICEP)

Black Intensive Civic Engagement Project (BICEP)Deepening democracy in African American communities

The African American community has been both a powerful leader and a loyal constituent of the US progressive movement. But efforts to mobilize black voters must begin with a critical question: Why has voting not done more to improve African Americans’ lives and livelihoods over the last thirty years? This question becomes even more urgent with the emergence of the Barak Obama campaign.

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With efforts to bring hundreds of thousands of active new black voters into the electoral process, and with the Obama campaign’s powerful upsurge in energy and voter mobilization, the 2008 electoral season becomes a signal opportunity to try new ways of engaging local activists and leaders in a deeper civic discourse about conditions in their communities. Whether Obama wins or loses, an in-depth conversation could not only help forge new policy agendas for local, state and federal lawmakers, but also could tie voter registration and GOTV (“Get Out the Vote”) efforts to those agendas. By doing so, it could create long term mechanisms for stimulating and supporting black political involvement and hence, greater leadership accountability. In past electoral cycles, civic engagement efforts mainly focused on convincing African Americans to support existing party platforms and candidates. Participation became an end in itself. Today, however, those efforts must focus on the issues and concerns that are most relevant to the lives of African Americans. BICEP is working to harness the momentum of the 2008 presidential season to advance dialogue, action and deep civic engagement extending beyond election cycles to permeate the fabric of community life. PARTNERSHIPSIn an unprecedented alliance, a group of five civic engagement organizations – The Advancement Project, National Coalition for Black Civic Participation, Pushback Network, Malia Lazu’s Youth Engagement Table and the MIT Community Innovators Lab – are joining forces to implement a set of strategic activities that will develop critical analyses of current conditions, raise their level of mutual accountability, eliminate duplication and maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of their efforts, enable shared learning and benchmarking, and produce a long-range road map for ongoing civic engagement in black communities. All of these efforts, it is hoped, will help to sustain the momentum generated in this last election cycle.

Called the Black Civic Engagement Alliance, the groups together reach a broad spectrum of constituencies through their work, using a variety of approaches to engaging, registering, mobilizing and protecting the ballot integrity of black voters. Collectively

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Civic engagement within black communities must not simply be about “moving black bodies” to the polls.

they plan to register hundreds of thousands of voters in the coming electoral season and then to work systematically through their institutions and networks to ensure these new voters actually get to the polls and are able to vote.

CoLab and its partners at MIT are working in the Alliance to support the use of technology – both to maximize the Alliance’s ability to use voter data and track their efforts, but also to engage with African American potential voters in new ways. CoLab partners include Progressive Technology Project and Shaping America’s Agenda, an initiative of dropping knowledge.

LINKS

The Advancement Projecthttp://www.advancementproject.org/

National Coalition for Black Civic Participation http://www.ncbcp.org/

Pushback Network http://www.pushbacknetwork.org/

Progressive Technology Project http://www.progressivetech.org/

dropping knowledgewww.droppingknowledge.org

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ProjectsGainShare

GainShareShared wealth generationBarriers in economic markets, often contribute to the marginalization of poor communities, GainShare is an approach that seeks innovative ways to harness these and other assets for the communities’ own benefit. Marginalized communities have valuable assets that remain unrecognized and untapped. Brownfields, undeveloped land, dense buying power, social cooperation of organized groups, even local knowledge and culture can all be sources of value. With the right support, community organizations can learn ways to leverage community assets into sustainable business models and generate shared wealth that supports their own development goals. By working with communitiy organizations and leaders to identify their most valuable assets, pair them with powerful partners in labor unions and elsewhere, and help them build sustainable business models around those assets, GainShare approaches help communities turn social capital into financial capital that can create a more stable financial base for their work. The coming wave of efforts to “green”--reduce the carbon footprint and increase ecological sustainability of-- cities could create unprecedented opportunities for Gainshare projects to generate shared wealth.

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GainShare approaches seek innovative ways to harness market forces in order to benefit marginalized communities.

GainShare and Green Over 300 US cities have committed to undergo green transformations, promising to usher in the biggest wave of public infrastructure spending since the New Deal. Who will benefit from the unprecedented wealth generation opportunities that will follow? Retrofitting to meet tougher conservation standards, decentralized energy generation and distribution, expansion of public transportation, and other “green” innovations at scale are a few of the possibilities for community involvement and benefit. GainShare approaches can help prepare organized communities to leverage these possibilities and maximize their financial and social gains. To learn more about CoLab’s Green Transformation work, click here. GainShare Projects

Research and Analytical FrameworksCoLab is supporting MIT Professor Phil Thompson and MIT graduate students Cyd McKenna and Carlos Espinoza-Toro in researching and documenting existing models of shared wealth generation. Case studies include:

Latino Community Credit Union, North CarolinaNeighborhood Entrepreneur Program, New York, NYMarket Creek, San Diego, CABrightwood Health Clinic GIS-based Community Health Maintenance System, Springfield, MAAFL-CIO Investment Trust Corporation, New Orleans, LA

Nonprofit Capacity BuildingCoLab is working with several NGOs to help them explore possibilities for incorporating GainShare methods and objectives into their work. In 2008, CoLab will host a small group of Gainshare partners from community-based organizations around the United States for an in-depth exploration and prototyping of innovative GainShare approaches applicable to their own local contexts.

MIT Course-based ProjectsIn the Fall of 2007, CoLab supported students in the MIT course Cooperative and Community Development to investigate opportunities for collectively owned wind

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power generation in South Africa and Appalachian Kentucky. Based on needs identified by local communities, students researched and compiled case studies on various wind farm ownership models. (Click here for the full report). CoLab is continuing to explore potential partnerships with these and other communities interested in cooperative wind ownership models.

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CoLab

Home About People Projects Partners Tools & Resources DonateNew OrleansNew Orleans, LouisianaComprehensive participatory neighborhood rebuildingTraditional planning theories separate the physical process of rebuilding infrastructure from the social process of rebuilding neighborhoods and communities. We believe that the two must be tightly integrated. While New Orleans, rebuilds its infrastructure, how can the city move its tens of thousands of poorly educated and unemployed people into careers as 21st century “green carpenters” and “green electricians?” As the schools reopen, how can the curricula be rethought to integrate training to match such career opportunities? To develop truly meaningful solutions and give them staying power in a community context, answering these questions requires both technical expertise and community participation.

CoLab supports the development of inclusive, participatory processes that engage residents within and across neighborhood boundaries to participate meaningfully in the rebuilding of the city. We seek to help residents capture their knowledge about their neighborhoods and translate that knowledge into achievable community development plans.

In the early stages of recovery, with a small grant from the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, DUSP deployed a group of graduate students to live full-time in New Orleans and provide staff and support to groups seeking to assess local capacity and organizing around participatory planning processes.

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Traditional planning theories separate the physical process of rebuilding infrastructure from the social process of rebuilding neighborhoods and communities., We believe that the two must

Despite the fact that residents and community-based organizations are best positioned to identify the challenges and concerns faced by each community, DUSP students’ early scan revealed very little infrastructure to support local residents’ and organizations’ efforts.

Since the storm, faculty affiliates of CoLab have:

Deployed 20 students through a graduate practicum to work with small local groups in the Tremé neighborhood to create a neighborhood rebuilding plan.

Assisted residents and a local CDC (Broadmoor Development Corporation) in the Broadmoor community in efforts to reopen a local library; develop program and funding proposals for the redevelopment of a community building; develop a land trust; and promote local commercial finance. DUSP students conducted comprehensive interviews of business owners and assisted in developing a business directory for them to hand out to residents returning to the community.

Worked with Enterprise Community Partners and Providence Community Housing to create neighborhood development strategies, options, and opportunities.

Partnered with Providence Community Housing to formulate the participatory

aspects of long-term economic development frameworks for these target neighborhoods.

Assisted the Vietnamese community in Village de l’Est (New Orleans East) to advance its rebuilding plans and capacity.

Worked with staff and volunteers at Mary Queen of Vietnam church to assess small business recovery needs and evaluate options to organize local business to support commercial corridor revitalization.

Conducted a program planning staff workshop and assisted with grant applications to the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

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Partnered with Gert Town to help establish an open-source property mapping system and process; built an open-source database management system and web portal to allow Gert Town residents and government to view this information online and update it as new information is available.

STUDENT INTERNSHIPSDuring Summer 2007, CoLab supported 15 MIT undergraduate and graduate students to work at the New Orleans Office of Recovery Management on planning and economic development initiatives related to the city’s recovery post-Katrina, including target-area planning and sustainability, energy, and green building policy and planning.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTCoLab is committed to unearthing the collective knowledge and lessons learned through these varied experiences via reflection sessions, information sharing, and learning seminars. Check out the DUSP@NOLA wiki to learn about past and current projects or to add your own project.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPSWe are currently exploring possible technology partnerships to support the development of neighborhood information systems that will support residents’ engagement in participatory planning processes.

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Green HubThe Green Hub at CoLabThe Green Hub at MIT is a collaborative project of MIT’s CoLab, Oxfam Great Britain (GB), and the Presencing Institute. The mission of Green Hub is to work collaboratively with MIT schools, departments and research centers, NGOs, governments, private sector groups, and others to create resources that are of value for the world at large. We work to promote a focus on equity, social inclusion, and social innovation in green transformations.

Our focusMore than 300 cities in the United States alone have pledged to undergo “green transformations.” There is growing public awareness that an unprecedented opportunity for urban transformation is underway. Yet, addressing the interrelated issues of poverty and social isolation is the critical missing element in many approaches to “green.” Since dense cities are essential to long-range ecological sustainability, greening efforts must address the root causes of urban poverty, white flight, and suburban sprawl. We call this approach “deep green.” The Green Hub works to advance and support comprehensive strategies that incorporate poor and marginal groups and create solutions to poverty and social isolation that will bring about effective and equitable, deep green transformation in cities.

Our workThe overall goals of the Green Hub are to:

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Poor urban communities of color must be included in setting the agenda and reaping the benefits of green urban transformations.

Promote a sharp focus on equity, social inclusion, and social innovation within existing responses to the coming wave of green transformations.

Develop on-the-ground projects that demonstrate the utility of socially transformative approaches to greening cities.

With the combined expertise of MIT’s CoLab, Oxfam GB, and the Presencing Institute, the Green Hub works through three avenues to achieve these goals. Our three impact areas are:

Global Prototypes (Oxfam GB) Research and Innovation (MIT) Social Technology (Presencing Institute)

How We Work: Global Prototypes with Oxfam GBThe Green Hub aims to support targeted cities across the globe in their transition to a low-carbon future. We see this work as an opportunity to restructure markets to ensure that poor communities have an economic and political stake in their future. The climate change agenda is opening up huge opportunities for redistributing power and wealth, and cities will be a key locus for this change. While the potential is significant, it could be lost without an immediate and concerted effort to develop and spread models of how poor and marginalized communities can capture the advantages of these new markets.

Beginning in 2008, the Green Hub aims to work with several cities in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Southern Hemisphere to frame major initiatives on green transformation. In partnership with Oxfam, the Green Hub will facilitate these efforts by identifying and leveraging support and resources for locations, organizations, and individuals where there is a high potential for innovative initiatives of significant scale that address both climate change and economic and social exclusion. The Green Hub aims to work with local partners to develop a sound political analysis of how change evolves in these locations, and to identify the key actors who will be central to framing and leading these initiatives. This initial scoping phase and analysis will be followed by work in each location to convene leaders and to work together toward defining a number of initiatives.

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How We Work: Research and Innovation at MITWithin MIT, the Green Hub works to connect key thinkers who are engaged in different aspects of green urban transformations to foster a vibrant arena for knowledge sharing, innovation, and on-the-ground implementation. To that end, we facilitate the transfer of interconnected knowledge in technology, business and financial models, methods, social technologies, and relationships for social inclusion and policy.

[need to add something here about the kitchen table working group

MIT DUSP Working GroupCoLab has convened a Working Group on Environmental Justice. The Working Group hosts monthly meetings in which MIT Department of Urban Studies (DUSP) professors discuss strategies to address the intersections of social equality, racial justice, and environmental sustainability. CoLab aims to work with this group to convene key thinkers and generate innovative strategies for urban green transformations that incorporate shared wealth formation for marginalized communities. The Working Group plans to develop comprehensive policy strategies to help US cities implement innovative, socially inclusive, deep green transformations.

Current participants include:DUSP Professor Phil ThompsonDUSP Professor Anne SpurnDUSP Professor Judy LayzerDUSP Professor Chris ZegrasCoLab Program Director Amber BradleyDUSP Graduate Student Amit Sarin

ResearchCoLab is supporting MIT graduate student Amit Sarin in researching green urban transformations and the opportunities these initiatives present for income generation in marginalized communities.

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MIT Course-based Projects CoLab works with MIT professors to identify community partners and develop client-based courses in which MIT graduate students work to create useful deliverables to community-based organizations. Course-based projects span the breadth of our work, and are often directly related to green transformations. To learn more about green-related projects as a part of our GainShare work, click here.

Tools and ResourcesCoLab is currently compiling information on a variety of green-related resources, with an emphasis on tools and resources relevant to social inclusion and deep green transformations. Initially, this resource will provide a clearinghouse for information on green-related resources, projects, people, and programs at MIT. Eventually, this tool will grow to include information on green resources and information across the globe.

[START HERE]

How We Work: Social Innovation with the Presencing InstituteSystemic change in cities will require a different kind of leadership: leadership that involves communities, reaches across sectors, and builds deep levels of trust, collaboration, and collective innovation. This approach is key to deep green transformation as it aims to fundamentally shift economic and social relations through the work on environmental regeneration and climate change.

Ecological challenges have become a critical consideration for a broad range of leaders beyond the environmental movement. As a result, today’s movement to “greenify” cities calls for a fundamental shift in the way that humans organize urban life. Massive public expenditures to reach ecological goals in urban areas create the potential for equitable investment in poor communities and a fulfillment of the New Deal’s unfinished promise of broad social inclusion for poor and minority people. However, there is little capacity for deeply addressing issues of equity and inclusion within current environmental efforts.

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Approaches that reach across sectors and build deep levels of trust, collaboration, and collective innovation are desperately needed to fully realize the transformative opportunities that green initiatives present.

In partnership with the Presencing Institute, the Green Hub will: Convene high-leverage, cross-disciplinary players to explore and address the lack

of an integrated base of knowledge and practice encountered by governments, investors, businesses, and communities.

Work with cross sector groups seeking to develop high-impact, creative solutions to socially inclusive, comprehensive green transformation.

Facilitate processes of analysis and creative development among a group of influential people and organizations that lead to concrete initiatives.

Apply the Presencing Institute’s social technologies, which allow people with highly diverse views and conflicting interests to engage in a focused way and generate new thinking, productive conversation, and practical breakthroughs.

Capture and share learning on both the initiatives themselves, as well as the “social technology” behind them—how different interest groups come together to transform their cities.

Our partnersOxfam Great BritainOxfam Great Britain (GB) is a founding partner of the Green Hub. Oxfam GB will engage in the framing of the initiative, contribute policy and program experience, and work with a number of concrete initiatives on the ground. As a first step, we aim to identify several locations where Oxfam and MIT can begin working together to support initiatives that meet the dual objectives of addressing climate change and reducing poverty and inequality. For more information on Oxfam GB’s work, click here.

Presencing InstituteThe Presencing Institute (PI) is a founding partner of the Green Hub. The Green Hub is a living embodiment of the Presencing Institute’s commitment to create

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places and infrastructures that convene strategic cross-sector groups of frontline leaders to strengthen their practices and networks, and thereby their capacity for dealing with profound leadership challenges.PI will apply social technologies to the Green Hub in an effort to bring together key players from several sectors, including business, government, labor, academia, and NGOs. For more information on the Presencing Institute, click here.

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ELIASEmerging Leaders Innovate Across Systems (ELIAS)Leaders in institutions around the world face unprecedented economic, social, ecological, and political challenges, both locally and globally. As these challenges continue to multiply in number and grow in complexity, leaders must develop innovative tools to confront them. In doing so, they can create opportunities to reinvent business models and identities, transform social change protocols, and work more collaboratively with governments.

CoLab is one of the hosts of ELIAS, or “Emerging Leaders Innovate Across Sectors.” ELIAS is a global cross-sector network of high-potential leaders and their institutions working collectively to generate new ideas, prototypes, and ventures. The purpose of ELIAS is to contribute to the evolution of sustainable global market systems that build human, social, and natural capital, as well as financial and industrial capital. Along with the Presencing Institute, and the MIT Leadership Center, in collaboration with MIT Sloan Executive Education, CoLab is launching the second year of the program.

Concrete outcomes of participation in the ELIAS leadership journey are:

Prototypes and prototype ideas for cross-sector innovation that address the shared challenges of creating value for the triple bottom line—the economy, society, and the environment—with the ultimate goal of advancing global sustainability.

Membership in a steadily growing network of leaders in the public, private, and civic sectors that will enhance and accelerate the benefits to individual participants.

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A growing capacity among participating organizations to develop strategic solutions to sustainability challenges that span the three sectors.

Pragmatic information and ideas for innovative solutions to individual members’ challenges.

An enhanced capacity among leaders to respond to the challenges of globalization and sustainable development by pioneering practical innovations.

The co-founders of ELIAS include BASF, BP, Nissan, Oxfam Great Britain, the UN Global Compact, Unilever, the World Bank Institute, and the World Wildlife Fund.

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Springfield, MassachusettsCommunity planning based on local resident knowledge

In 2001, CoLab (then CRCP) made a 10-year commitment to support community planning and development initiatives in the North End neighborhood of Springfield, Massachusetts. This commitment includes a partnership with the North End Outreach Network (NEON), the North End Campus Committee (NECC), and an annual Springfield Studio practicum course.

Springfield Studio practicum course

The Springfield Studio is an annual practicum design course in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). It focuses on the physical, programmatic, and social renewal of the North End community in Springfield, Massachusetts, by combining student course work with an applied class project. Community outreach workers join students in collaborating on the project design. The Springfield Studio draws upon knowledge gained from other collaborative projects, including previous practica, the Community Mapping project, the North End Strategic Plan, and individual student research. Past courses can be accessed free through MIT OpenCourseWare.

Final student projects include a plan and design for a community campus to unite the North End (Spring 2004), as well as an economic development plan for the North End (Fall 2005).

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Springfield PhotoSpringfield PhotoSpringfield PhotoSpringfield PhotoSpringfield PhotoSpringfield PhotoSpringfield Photo

Note: Please note that CRCP has been renamed the Community Innovators Lab (CoLab), and all current and future projects will be referenced as such.

Digital StorytellingIn the summer of 2001, NEON (North End Outreach Network) community health advocates created digital stories based on their own experiences in confronting issues they had witnessed in their work. These stories are offered in both English and Spanish.

Telling Our Legacies Digitally (TOLD) began in 2002 as the North End digital storytelling team, a “train the trainers” initiative led by CRCP. TOLD brought together community workers from diverse organizations in Springfield, Massachusetts, and led them through the process of producing short multimedia narratives on topics significant to their communities. In conjunction with the North End Strategic Planning Process, the group developed a proposal for establishing the nation’s first community-based digital storytelling center in Springfield. In October 2003, the Waitt Family Foundation awarded them seed money. The group subsequently appointed an acting director and moved forward with its plans.

STRATEGIC PLANNINGDuring the summer of 2003, CRCP and NEON led the North End community in creating the North End Strategic Plan. As part of the process, 15 satellite meetings and two larger community meetings were held to gather input for a unified vision and goals for its neighborhoods over the next five years. Defined goal areas included lifelong learning, health, safety, and economic development. The plan was successfully submitted to the Waitt Family Foundation, which later provided support to the community for achieving its goals and vision.

COMMUNITY MAPPINGCRCP brought together three community organizations—the Alamosa Neighborhood Association in Albuquerque, New Mexico; the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Roxbury, Massachusetts; and the North End Outreach Network (NEON) in Springfield, Massachusetts. In addition to engaging these groups in building local expertise in

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geographic information systems (GIS), CRCP assisted them in developing new software for community mapping and spatial information management.

NEON www.neonprogram.org

Springfield Studiohttp://dusp.mit.edu/p.lasso?t=6:2:0&detail=11.403

MIT OpenCourseWarehttp://ocw.mit.edu/

PDF: plan and design for a community campus to unite the North End (Spring 2004)

PDF: economic development plan for the North End (Fall 2005)

NEON community health advocates created digital stories—Link to Digital Stories Archive in Tools & Resources section

PDF: North End Strategic Plan

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Partners

Presencing Institute

dropping knowledge “dropping knowledge” is a global initiative to support the free and open sharing of knowledge among the people of the world. Born out of the unprecedented democratizing power of the Internet, dropping knowledge employs advanced web technology to empower the global public to raise questions on issues of import and to seek new solutions through community dialogue. Ceasar McDowell, former CRCP director, is now the executive director of dropping knowledge US. CoLab supports dropping knowledge through a CoLab Emerging Leader Fellowship for Amritha Subramanian. For more on Amritha’s work with dropping knowledge, click here. To visit the dropping knowledge website, click here.

MIT@LawrenceMIT@Lawrence is a long-term commitment to support dynamic and mutually beneficial relationships among faculty, students, and staff at MIT, together with civic leaders, residents, and community-based organizations in Lawrence, Massachusetts. To learn more about this work, visit the MIT@Lawrence website.

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Tools & Resources

DUSP@NOLA wikiThe MIT community and our community partners created the DUSP@NOLA wiki to increase awareness of the work of DUSP students, faculty, and staff in New Orleans, Louisiana, and to promote collaboration and dialogue on specific projects.

Reflective Practice Reflective practice is an approach that enables practitioners to leverage their knowledge in practical situations and to combine action and learning more effectively. Through greater awareness and reflection, practitioners identify the knowledge that is embedded in the experience of their work, improve their actions in a timely way, and achieve greater flexibility and conceptual innovation.

For a mini-course on reflective practice, check out Reflective Practice: An Approach for Expanding Your Learning Frontiers. Taught in January 2007 by MIT Professor Ceasar McDowell and CoLab Visiting Scholar Sebastiao Mendonca Ferreira, it is free through MIT OpenCourseWare.

Digital StoriesFrom 2000 to 2004, CoLab (then CRCP) used digital storytelling as a tool for reflection and community building. Digital storytelling originated at the Center for Digital Storytelling in Berkeley, California. By integrating narrative, oral history, filmmaking, and sound in a workshop process, it allows multimedia novices to produce two-to-five minute video pieces that can be viewed on VHS, CD-ROM, DVD, or the Internet.

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This digital stories archive includes dozens of digital stories produced between 2000 and 2004 by CRCP affiliates, including community organizers, MIT graduate students, and youth. Click on the title of a story to open and play it in a new window. (You must have QuickTime 5.0 or higher installed on your computer to play these digital stories. QuickTime can be downloaded free at http://www.quicktime.com.)

Working Smarter in Community DevelopmentThe Working Smarter in Community Development website is a tool for self-directed learning that was created to improve the effectiveness of community development practice. Broadly defined, it aims to help committed people and institutions work smarter, not just harder. On this site, you will find Knowledge-in-Action briefs that bring together cutting-edge ideas in an accessible format—often with mini-cases of the ideas at work—with simple references for further reading. In addition, you will find Learning Guides to use as structured guides for leading discussions and for linking ideas in the briefs to issues in the field or classroom projects. “Working Smarter” is a companion to the Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT, which focuses more globally on civic processes, such as partnering, negotiating, organizing civic action, and leading participatory planning.

The Community Problem-Solving Project @ MITThe Community Problem-Solving Project @ MIT is a learning space for people and institutions worldwide who work on a wide variety of issues within and across the private, nonprofit, and public sectors. On this site, you will find Strategy Tools for approaching issues and working with other stakeholders more effectively, as well as Program Tools for responding to specific, substantive problems by learning what does and does not work in a given area, such as housing, health, and education.

GainShare Case Studies

LINKS

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DUSP@NOLA wiki—link to wiki URL

Reflective Practice: An Approach for Expanding Your Learning Frontiers.http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Urban-Studies-and-Planning/11-965January--IAP--2007/CourseHome/index.htm

Center for Digital Storytellinghttp://www.storycenter.org/

digital stories archive—link to digital stories archive, which will contain all the digital stories currently on the CRCP website (we just have to download the files and put them in a web folder)

Working Smarter in Community Development websitehttp://web.mit.edu/workingsmarter/

The Community Problem-Solving Project @ MITwww.community-problem-solving.net/

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