What does the Center For Collaborative Change do?

The Center is based on the belief that people who live and work in a community have the best insights into the problems affecting their community and therefore for any new solution to be successfully adopted, the residents need to take part in and lead these transformative efforts. That’s what the Center for Collaborative Change facilitates. We are a community-based consulting firm with a simple process to bring transformative change to the community – work with community members to map and identify the most pressing problems, research policy and programmatic solutions that have worked elsewhere, and implement them in Newark with full buy-in and support from policy-makers, local nonprofits and community leaders.

We start by asking community members to identify the issues most critical to them that are insufficiently addresses by present approaches. Where unmet needs result from gaps in services or policies, we Find, Import, Tailor & Support proven and promising practices to address those unmet needs. Where they result from a lack of coordination of existing resources and services, we seek to maximize the benefits of those resources by developing means for improved coordination. Our participatory approach fosters a sense of inclusion and community ownership, as it produces new programs and policies to repair our city.

Why start now? And why this approach?

The power of collaborative change comes from bringing local intelligence and outside resources together for a common purpose, and placing civil servants and the people they serve on the same team. Nationally, we are witnessing a renewed federal commitment to urban affairs. Newark has dynamic leadership, committed businesses and universities, devoted nonprofits, and citizen changemakers. But in order for all these factors to convert into actual change, we need to restore trust between Newark’s decision-makers and residents, establish norms of consultation between government and residents and essentially realign them to be on the same team.

We envision the Center’s role to be distinctive. By working closely with municipal government but not being responsible for day-to-day governance, the Center is uniquely situated to identify efforts within the community and government that can be synergized with one another or with external efforts for greater impact.

Here are us some examples.

Newark residents throughout the city complain about the high incidence of “joyriding” (car theft and racing), which is dangerous to people and injurious to private property. By consulting citizens, police officers, traffic engineers, and others, the Center can find solutions that have worked elsewhere and select the right one for Newark, making sure that it is integrated with the city’s existing framework for crime, juvenile justice and youth programming. Another example would be in the area of government operations – pieces of legislation, hiring documents, or requests for proposals all too often get lost going from office to office for sign-off in City Hall, resulting in delays and frustrations. The Center can find organizational and/or technical innovations used by and in other locales.