mission

The Center for Collaborative Change

The mission of The Center for Collaborative Change (the Center) is to engage and empower community members to participate in generating innovative solutions to Newark’s most urgent problems.

The Center seeks to Find, Import, Tailor & Support proven and promising practices of urban revitalization for the city of Newark, New Jersey. By engaging community and civic leadership in policy and program development, the Center will accelerate Newark’s revitalization while ensuring that the process includes and responds to the priorities of its community members. 

Our innovative community-based consulting process fuses the rigorous analytic approach of a for-profit consulting firm with the power of community engagement in order to bring Newark change that *FITS*:

  • Find best practices to address the community’s needs as defined by the people of Newark.
  • Import promising policy and program models.
  • Tailor the models to Newark’s strengths and needs & integrate them with existing efforts.
  • Support their implementation with the resources required to get the job done.

Why Start Now? This is a special moment in our nation’s history. We are witnessing a renewed federal commitment to urban affairs. All over America, people are working together to meet the challenges facing their communities. The people who live and work in Newark have the ability to take part in and lead these transformative efforts. Newark is blessed with dynamic local leadership, committed businesses and universities, devoted nonprofit organizations, and individual citizens who are determined that their city live up to its full potential. These dedicated groups have already begun to create positive change in the city, and Newark is on track to reach new heights.

For these changes to be meaningful and sustainable, the people of Newark must participate in and enjoy the benefits of the city’s rise. The Center for Collaborative Change is committed to incorporating the contributions of residents, city government officials, nonprofit organizations and businesses into the process of identifying and taking on the city’s most pressing challenges.

Why Collaborative Change? The people who live and work in Newark have the best insights into the issues affecting their community. Working together with the community to address the city’s most pressing problems, the Center will find better, more locally appropriate policy and program solutions to the issues most critical to its residents. Those consulted will know their input contributed to the final recommendations and results, and gain ownership and empowerment derived from participating in an inclusive process. Their input will also contribute to the model’s integrity and likelihood for success, ensuring that community participants will also benefit from the outcomes of the process: effective and efficient policies and services. 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.

In order to focus its research on policies and programs that will address the city’s most pressing areas of need, the Center will periodically conduct citywide needs assessments concentrating on the areas of security, economic opportunity, and child and family wellbeing. The Center’s first needs assessment began on July 1, 2009. You can learn more about this assessment, including how to get involved, by going to our Projects page.

Our Goals: The Center aims to improve the quality of life for Newark residents through concrete, results-oriented policies and programs, and also through increasing positive affect between citizens and local decision-makers. As a vehicle through which residents can collaborate with those possessing power to make appreciable change, it strives to cultivate trust between citizens, government and other institutions. Stated differently, the Center is committed to accomplishing three long term goals for Newark:

  • Establish norms of consultation between city government and residents.
  • Through this enhanced communication, restore trust between Newark’s decisionmakers and residents, realigning them to be on the same team.
  • Use the knowledge and resources of that alliance to establish a critical mass of reforms that will bring Newark to a tipping point where a positive cycle of health, abundance and opportunity can be achieved.

While the Center will serve the entire Newark community, its work will have the greatest impact on subgroups that have the most difficulty bringing their issues to the attention of local decision-makers. The Center will take on issues that, for political or logistical reasons, cannot be top priority of municipal government, but significantly impact the quality of life of local residents.

Finally, the Center has begun sharing ideas and information with individuals and organizations in other cities around the country, both about proven and promising policies and programs, and about the Center’s model itself.

    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.