What Makes a Community Vital?

By Aliaa Eldabli, Research and Learning Coordinator at WE in the World and Peter Eckart, Senior Fellow at WE in the World

Who can you rely on in a time of emergency?

Who are your neighbors and are they willing to help you in a time of need?

What spaces and resources facilitate connection, trust, belonging, and well-being in your community?

The answers to the questions above are powerful and personal, and also important pointers to how we value and understand communities for all.  In the fourth listening session for the WIN Measures Update, researchers, community leaders, and measurement practitioners grappled with how to measure equity, racial justice, and intergenerational well-being in the context of community vitality.

“What matters most to you and your community?”  The original WIN Measures attempted to reflect the complexity of this question by breaking down the measures into four sub-domains -- Social Capital & Social Networks, Trust in Government, Civic Engagement, and Social Inclusiveness -- but even with these divisions, the measures reflect only a small part of what unites communities.  The WE in the World team put together this primer on measurement with some onramps to this complex issue.  Participants in the session filled the community space with answers to this question, with themes around thriving conditions, sense of belonging, accessibility, and trusted relationships:

• “Opportunity to work in partnership so all members can thrive even as the definition of thriving may vary; that people have access to the health and social services they need without barriers”

• “Sense of belonging and trust in government are important, among others.”

• “Everyone has access to communication lines”

• “The opportunity for everyone to live and contribute to their full potential, freed from systems of oppression”

• “Sense of belonging, safety, trusted community messengers and networks”

• “Broad and easy access to voting in elections”

• “Community cohesion and sense of well-being”

• “Everyone thriving - emotionally, physically, and spiritually”

Additionally, stepping into this complicated landscape were three featured speakers and a host of community measurement professionals, practitioners, and residents.

The principles for equitable and inclusive civic engagement... frame the process of civic engagement as an environment where practices, motivations, and structural barriers all come together to determine how people are able to impact the policies that affect them most. In that process, people of color tend to have less access to power to determine our policies and our principles for civic engagement.

Dwight “Kip” Holley, MSW, Social Research Associate of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University opened the session with recorded reflection on the existing WIN Measures and possible additional measures.  While appreciating the very existence of the current community vitality measures, Holley reflected that some of the measures disadvantaged poor people and communities of color, such as communities wanting measures of volunteerism that reflect their experiences.  For example, traditional research often underreports people with low-income and communities of color where residents have to work more than one job and thus have less time to volunteer, or the volunteering is “nontraditional,” such as unpaid caregiving to neighbors.

You also have to think about the time that people have to volunteer versus the time they have to spend -- maybe working one or maybe two jobs -- to make the same amount of money as people from other communities.

Holley also echoed speakers from past sessions, on the importance of contextualizing data with stories to capture the big picture and underlying community vitality barriers, and by gathering around new tables where community residents themselves represent what happens in communities:

I would recommend bringing some more qualitative data and stories from the community into the measures, particularly when focusing on communities of color… despite the vitality communities of color universally have, they are often seen as less vital because of the effects of structural racism [which] may distort more common measurements such as voting… You can also think about the difficulty of voting in many states with restrictive [voting] laws built around denying black and brown communities the vote.

Uplifting [communities’] gifts and assets, having honest dialogues and productive conflict, and empowering and creating a real invitation to people who are often left out of the conversation that cannot really be captured in a data point, but it can be captured in stories and experiences.

Finally, Holley suggested generating a rubric that can be used at the micro-level to truly understand the diversity and complexity of communities, how to begin to facilitate community empowerment, and invest in deep-rooted relationships:

Say we want to define community vitality by the amount of empowerment that people have in terms of who they’re in networks with or who’s at the table or how much influence they have been able to have over policy or the amount of informal spaces… we can do that by sort of gathering first hand accounts and then using some means-tested characteristic to create a rubric of ‘if these things are happening in communities, we’re looking at [communities’] vitality.’

Stephanie Russo-Carroll, PhD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Public Health and Associate Director for the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona framed the next part of our community vitality conversation, around the inherent rights of indigenous peoples and nations to govern their own data as part of rebuilding and reclaiming the notion of community vitality.

As indigenous nations rebuild their governance systems, they’re also reclaiming their data systems.

The indigenous data sovereignty movement lifts up indigenous peoples as rights holders of exercising the care and use of indigenous knowledge and data, and how sovereignty not only recognizes but activates the health of indigenous communities. Dr. Russo-Carroll explained the concept of indigenous data governance as preliminary and foundational to understanding health and well-being of communities with guidance from the CARE principles:

In response to the increased use of big data and limited opportunities for indigenous control and benefit from these data, the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA) developed CARE principles for indigenous data governance, designed to guide the inclusion of indigenous peoples, data governance, and increased access to their own data. The CARE principles include values-based relationships, improved governance and citizen engagement, and equitable outcomes.  For indigenous people to have the authority to control their data, their presence must be centered, self-determining and collectively benefitting from the data, and indigenous people’s rights and well-being should be at all stages of the data life cycle.

Dr. Russo-Carroll emphasized how we can all put indigenous data sovereignty into practice through governance and stewardship mechanisms by leveraging laws, policies, treaties, and agreements:

We are concerned about implementing CARE into already existing data. We can begin to place indigenous data governance through our laws such as the Common Rule in the US, draft Tribal laws, institutional, governmental, and professional guidelines, trainings and tools within our metadata that perpetuate ethics when interacting with data systems, and through our infrastructure that sets data standards programming.  We need more tools and criteria to assess and evaluate how other institutions are actually enacting the CARE principles.

In alignment with Dr. Russo-Carroll’s remarks, Christina Oré, DrPH, MPH, Research Scientist, Technical Assistance Provider, and Senior Advisor of Seven Directions: Indigenous Public Health Institute, Center for the Study of Health & Risk Behaviors at the University of Washington shared examples from a public health perspective that centers communities and grounds work in indigenous knowledge pathways with a focus on indigenous social determinants of health, resilience research, values-based approach to data, storytelling, and the extension of the meaning of community vitality is beyond interpersonal and includes connection to land.

What’s really important right now is listening to the stories… and looking at resilience as a continuum of survival through to thrivance -- looking at those conditions that contributed to making those changes so that there isn’t always the act of resilience -- that we are really moving toward thrivance measures in life over time.

Oré formulated a community unifying equation towards thriving communities across the life course (resilience + thriving communities = intergenerational well-being) and how storytelling can help plug in this equation into communities:

What we find in American Indian Alaska Native resilience research looking at [thriving communities] along the life course is that gathering stories is an ongoing dynamic, with linked lives, intergenerational life knowledge transmission, and access to cultural knowledge and practices. This is a continuation of the discussion on the importance of tribal sovereignty and governance and centering communities and relationships when looking at methodology and these measures. 

Oré went on to advocate for measures that align with indigenous communities’ values across subdomains of trust in government, relational accountability, and social networking. 

It’s important to look at social capital.  Where is the line between cultural understandings and value around collective identity and practice and being in community?  How do they align with what kind of measures that exist? Trust takes time, and when we think about trusting a government, are we talking about Tribal government or county, state, and federal government?

A lot of work from American Indian studies is starting to emerge around looking at those values of respect, reciprocity, reverence, and responsibility to those relationships and to the relationships for which you’re gathering information.... A values-based framework begins with methodology that establishes long-term commitment to relationships by not just collecting stories, but ensuring interpretation [of stories] is driven by the Tribe.

In response to featured speaker presentations, participants wanted to understand the pulse of community thriving:

• I am thinking about how the ownership and governance of people and communities over their own data is an element of community vitality

• I'm curious how intermediary organizations that don't have as much direct interactions with residents can still look at neighborhood level measures of these domains.

• Civic engagement beyond voting -- how organized are communities, how to measure all kinds of volunteering, groups that are raising critical consciousness

• The importance of the community's values related to our metrics

• The opportunity to add strong measures into existing measurement tools

In addition to the comments from the featured presenters, the session featured feedback on the existing measures and a robust consideration of possible future measures.  In recognition that community vitality is such a broad topic of interest that can be measured in so many ways, community organizers, researchers, people with lived/living experience of inequities, and practitioners offered these critiques of the current measures:

• Love that the sub-domain includes “connection” -- the measures don’t yet seem to capture connection (opposite of isolation?)

• It'd be nice to start seeing the flip to more strength-based [measures] so rather than looking at the lack of social emotional support, how can we start asking those questions that tap into the strength-based approach to community vitality, (especially with national databases)?

• Not sure that social networks are adequately captured in the current measures

• When racial diversity is not present, how to recognize other kinds of diversity and how it manifests in community vitality?  For example, in New Hampshire rural communities?

• Change: Helping neighbors measure - are we measuring the right things here? People might help their WHITE neighbors - which neighbors???  Maybe “I would help neighbors of a different race, age, etc.?”

• Is there an asset-based framing of “barriers to civic engagement”? (e.g., something that is asset-based that would capture the absence of laws & policies meant to undermine engagement such as voter suppression laws)

The participants went on to explore what measures best describe and document what enables communities and their residents to thrive, including the following:

• Survey Q that gets at strong versus weak ties (and impotence of both).

• Measurement of individual “heart & mind” to build/strengthen community (“I want to learn/know more about my community”)

• Representation of various sub-communities in places of power (on staff, boards, etc)

• Measure of common spaces where intergenerational connections can happen

• Measure of hope and optimism

• Measuring trust in government at the local level not just federally

• Seek to measure: Inclusive Community Leadership, Collaborative Institutions, Embracing Diversity, Equity, Authentic Communication, Shared Vision and Values

• Accessibility, availability, and sometimes affordability of art expression as a measure (of civic engagement)

• Add a measure on who and how many people you can rely on in an emergency or put on an emergency contact form

• For youth and older adults, “I feel connected to youth/older adults outside of my immediate family”

• Add a measure about whether or not I can communicate with community members in my preferred language

• Measurement of individual and community gifts that can support (community) well-being 

• Measure of sense of agency to create something within their own community

• Measure of local government contact (I feel confident/willing to contact my local elected leader)

Participants continued to ask thought-provoking questions on how to move forward with measuring community vitality:

• How do we incorporate the hearts and minds of individual people into the measures?

• Is there an asset-based framing of “barriers to civic engagement”? (e.g., something that is asset based that would capture the absence of laws & policies meant to undermine engagement such as voter suppression laws)

• How to collect information on measuring people that are engaged with a civic or neighborhood group

• How do we build trust in the community-level capacity and understanding, so that it can be aggregated in some meaningful way for intermediary and higher-level use?

• Not sure if the answers to these questions/measures would lead to interventions, and if so, how? If asking the question & the answer is “low” trust in helping neighbors - then what is the intervention? Follow-up questions may be inevitable here.

• What does a community resilience measure look like?

• How do we look at gathering collective, community-level data that isn’t just an aggregation of individual responses?

One of the session practitioners offered this vision of a measurement process that reflects a greater willingness of listening with the purpose to understand:

Real listening and hearing leads to understanding, which leads to seeing people as individuals, which allows for connections between people.  Seeing people as individuals allows for change -- not for a specific change, but an iterative process.

We measure what we value. How will we listen to what communities value with racial justice and intergenerational lenses? What community measurement processes and outcomes will we decide to change for thriving communities for all?
The presentation slides, webinar recording and meeting notes are all available now. Materials from past webinars on this review process are located here. You can register for the next session, on equity in education, here. We look forward to being in community with you in our future WIN Measures listening sessions.