Still reeling from that shooting news.
I know I am not alone as the President's comments in his radio address this morning will attest.
People in Newtown, CT say "things like that aren't supposed to happen here." When these things happen and people make that comment we all need to realize THINGS LIKE THAT should not be happening anywhere. But they do!
So, do we act or do we stagnate in helplessness?
As much as that question seems a proverbial "no brainer" all who are involved in regular thinking about "community thinking" know that stagnation is likely to be the answer.
1 -- We have to contend with human nature (that is not easy to change)
2 -- We have to contend with the politics of the second amendment
3 -- We have to contend with the horror of the experience and the desire to hope it will pass without a lot of discussion.
4 -- Will Newtown, CT be the tipping point in Americans taking a closer look at who we really are or will we await something just a bit more horrific?
5 -- Can we answer the question of why, even a crazy person, thinks this kind of violence is a means to their ends.
It is easy to see why most of us are going to take a Scarlett O'Hara approach to this problem -- and "think about it tomorrow."
Showing posts with label community thinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label community thinking. Show all posts
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Thursday, July 21, 2011
How do you know a program is working
The Byerly Foundation is in the community building business and we do this by providing grants for programs that the Byerly Board hopes will make a significant difference in helping Hartsville become an even better place to live and one of the best places to live -- anywhere. That is a stretch goal, by almost any defihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifnition.
One of the major problems the Foundation has and nearly all Foundations and community development types of programs is how to know if programs work. Normally the groups implementing the programs will set their goals and list the measures they want to use to measure effectiveness. Then you assess the program based on the approved metrics. Sometimes this gets you the information you want and sometimes it doesn't.
More-Than-Good-Intentions
One thing that those working with Foundations and other funders do is continue to explore ways to measure effectiveness. This week the Stanford Innovation Review has a review of a book that discusses how programs might be measured. Just a few minutes ago I ordered this book from Burry Bookstore -- More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty by Dean Karlan & Jacob Appel
According to the reviewer, Kevin Starr, "Karlan and Appel believe that understanding what works for poverty alleviation programs boils down to one deceptively simple question: “How did people’s lives change with the program, compared with how they would have changed without it?” The primary—but not only—tool that Karlan et al. use to answer that question is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). In an RCT, a pool of subjects is randomly divided into intervention and control groups; the former gets the interventions and the latter does not. The two groups are fundamentally alike—both are measured before and after, and the impact is the difference between what happened to the intervention group and to the control group. RCTs are not new. The novel element here is the systematic and creative application of RCTs to test poverty solutions in the real world."
This is an interesting concept because when you are working on social interventions, it is difficult to keep something that is working away from control groups and often times you have try designing your research project to somehow give those randomized out a chance for being in. While I have not discussed this fully with Dr. Eve Puffer I believe this is a tactic she has used in a major innovation project fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS in Muhuru Bay, Kenya. The Byerly Foundation is currently funding a major project with the Hartsville Middle School called Foxy Leaders that aims to take students at real risk of not finishing school and giving them an even stronger foundation than they might get in regular classes. I am not sure how this could be an RCT. That is why it is going to be interesting to get that book and discover what they authors have found in their research.
One of the major problems the Foundation has and nearly all Foundations and community development types of programs is how to know if programs work. Normally the groups implementing the programs will set their goals and list the measures they want to use to measure effectiveness. Then you assess the program based on the approved metrics. Sometimes this gets you the information you want and sometimes it doesn't.
More-Than-Good-Intentions
One thing that those working with Foundations and other funders do is continue to explore ways to measure effectiveness. This week the Stanford Innovation Review has a review of a book that discusses how programs might be measured. Just a few minutes ago I ordered this book from Burry Bookstore -- More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics Is Helping to Solve Global Poverty by Dean Karlan & Jacob Appel
According to the reviewer, Kevin Starr, "Karlan and Appel believe that understanding what works for poverty alleviation programs boils down to one deceptively simple question: “How did people’s lives change with the program, compared with how they would have changed without it?” The primary—but not only—tool that Karlan et al. use to answer that question is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). In an RCT, a pool of subjects is randomly divided into intervention and control groups; the former gets the interventions and the latter does not. The two groups are fundamentally alike—both are measured before and after, and the impact is the difference between what happened to the intervention group and to the control group. RCTs are not new. The novel element here is the systematic and creative application of RCTs to test poverty solutions in the real world."
This is an interesting concept because when you are working on social interventions, it is difficult to keep something that is working away from control groups and often times you have try designing your research project to somehow give those randomized out a chance for being in. While I have not discussed this fully with Dr. Eve Puffer I believe this is a tactic she has used in a major innovation project fighting the spread of HIV/AIDS in Muhuru Bay, Kenya. The Byerly Foundation is currently funding a major project with the Hartsville Middle School called Foxy Leaders that aims to take students at real risk of not finishing school and giving them an even stronger foundation than they might get in regular classes. I am not sure how this could be an RCT. That is why it is going to be interesting to get that book and discover what they authors have found in their research.
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