Strengthening Community Voices
Community-Based Monitoring, Learning, and Action for an Era of Devolution
By Larry Parachini and Andrew Mott with Susan Rees

When the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program replaced urban renewal, model cities, and six other programs with a flexible block grant of over $4 billion in 1975, the program came with few federal strings or safeguards. In response to local groups' concerns about CDBG's affects on and value for the poor, several national organizations began perhaps the best known and most comprehensive national citizen monitoring initiative ever carried out. At its peak, this National Citizens' Monitoring Project on CDBG, which lasted from 1978 to 1982, involved local groups in monitoring CDBG's implementation in 43 cities, with over 80 community organizations and other groups involved at one time or another during the course of the project.

The project led to significant national and local policy changes. At the federal level, the project won a requirement that 75 percent of all CDBG funds must benefit lower-income people; major reforms in public hearing and accountability rules; and stronger federal monitoring and enforcement of federal requirements. In Philadelphia, work by the monitoring coalition led to a commitment that 50 percent of the city's community development funding would go to nonprofit housing. That victory still stands today, almost two decades later, as do many others.

Moreover, the concept of community organizing behind the CBDG Monitoring Project may be even more important in today's political climate. There is a growing consensus that the most serious problems of America's poor communities can only be solved if poor people assume leadership for bringing about positive change. This belief underlies the rationale for devolution and welfare reform, both of which hold that people have responsibilities toward themselves and their communities. This conviction crosses political and ideological boundaries, finding support from the right and left and from many ordinary citizens and leaders who are searching for new answers to our country's problems. Community-based monitoring addresses this feeling by intrinsically involving well-informed poor people from the start and arming them with knowledge to help shape programs and policies at every level of government.

As part of a review last year of community based monitoring in its varied permutations over the past 30 years, we have coined the term Community-based Monitoring, Learning, and Action (CMLA). Each element of CMLA reinforces the others in an ongoing cycle. One group that practices the method, the University of Tennessee's Learning Initiative, depicts CMLA as a learning circle. Its interactive ingredients can be described as:

1. community monitoring/research by poor people of targeted government or private sector institutions, policies or practices to gather and analyze data essential for strategies of change;
2. participatory learning processes to build the research and/or monitoring skills and other capacities of poor people, and to involve them in determining strategic goals, objectives and plans; and
3. strategic action directly involving poor people in efforts intended to influence the targeted institutions, policies, or practices.

CMLA, the community groups that use it have found, has many advantages over centralized national research or evaluation models. Like large-scale, centralized research and evaluation, CMLA is grounded in facts, data analysis, understanding, and communications. And like large-scale projects, CMLA can take place in many areas, thus making findings applicable to national as well as local and state policy. But unlike centralized national research and impact analyses, CMLA has a better chance of influencing policy at all levels. This is primarily because it is the constituents of policy makers, not researchers far removed from the scene, who collect, analyze, and articulate the data. Community researchers do, however, frequently benefit from the assistance of experts with technical research and organizing expertise.

Second, living in the community enables CMLA practitioners to understand the uniqueness of the local situation. Devolution, after all, is justified as necessary to take advantage of the knowledge of those "closest to home." And unlike national evaluators, locals will have to live with the consequences if their recommendations are adopted.

Third, CMLA practitioners are trained to work together in the very act of learning and monitoring. CMLA's participatory learning and popular education develops joint ownership and enables people to break out of the habit of "organizing the choir" and bridge differences among diverse groups that share local concerns.

History

CMLA grows out of four separate traditions that over time became associated with different organizations or methods. They are: community organizing, which almost always has an element of research and data gathering; citizen monitoring, as a technique for increasing government accountability; participatory action research, which employs poor people to evaluate conditions affecting them; and popular education, introduced and popularized by the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and the Highlander Center.

Our review of past and existing projects uncovered examples from each tradition that appear to be moving in similar directions-toward the use of participatory learning and popular education to enable constituencies to think about the larger economic and social context affecting their communities. This process can help people understand the views and values they share, work through their differences with others, develop longer-term strategies, and take carefully researched and planned actions that fit their contexts, priorities, and styles of operating.

Most of the examples included in this review feature some but not all of the elements of CMLA. Only a few are national in scope, with data collected from multiple sites.

CDBG Monitoring Project

The National Citizens' Monitoring Project on CDBG mentioned above was included in this review. Funded by a federal grant, the project was staffed and carried out by the Working Group for Community Development Reform, a coalition of over 75 national, regional, and local organizations. The Center for Community Change served as fiscal agent for the project and played a leadership role in the Working Group, including conceiving of and designing the project based on its previous experience monitoring General Revenue-Sharing. A parallel project carried out by Rural America monitored CDBG's implementation in 26 rural areas during this same period.

Funding to local and state groups enabled this group to deploy accountable staff. The research was designed to be rigorous but also useful to ordinary people. Included were data review and analysis, structured interviews with decision makers, participation in public meetings, and report preparation. In the course of conducting this research, citizen monitors learned about applicable laws, decision-making processes, and whether or not the program was meeting local needs and federal standards. Frequent national convenings facilitated sharing of information and ideas, as well as the development of joint recommendations and action strategies to achieve policy changes.

As the project evolved, local monitors joined the national project board and assumed a greater role in shaping research priorities and national strategy. This new local perspective enhanced the quality of the data collected and led CDBG's chief evaluator at HUD to say, "One word summarizes our views on your research-credibility."

Some of the project's numerous other accomplishments centered on substantial growth in local groups' capacities and sophistication, which helped them participate effectively in shaping government decisions affecting their communities. The project also developed leaders in many locales.

For example, almost 20 years ago Belinda Mayo was a community-based monitor of the CDBG program in Philadelphia. Today she's assistant director of the Philadelphia Office of Housing and Community Development, and her group's monitoring still affects the way the city allocates CDBG dollars. She explains: "At a pivotal time, I went to [people] who had been part of the monitoring project in other cities. There was a group from Prince George's County (MD) who shared with us a local ordinance they had developed. I was able to bring that ordinance back to Philadelphia and work with our legal services attorneys and our coalition on CDBG to develop an ordinance for Philadelphia. It mandated that 50 percent of the CDBG dollars be used on housing, and 75 percent of the dollars be used in a way that principally benefited very low-income people. To this day, our ordinance is still in effect."

"On a personal level-having been part of that project, understanding the process so well, being exposed to my peers in other places, and exchanging information-it helped me grow professionally. I don't want to pat myself on the back, but there are people who have said that I'm an expert on CDBG. It's been my entire career."

Other CDBG community monitors have national positions today. At least two hold seats in Congress, three others chair or direct national organizations, and some hold national offices in foundations, local and state governments, and other institutions.

Although the CDBG Monitoring Project ended 15 years ago when federal funding stopped, it lives on in many local organizations around the country. For example, the San Francisco Information Clearinghouse (SFIC) for two decades has assured a high level of funding and support for some 90 neighborhood and community development organizations in the city. "We really hold [the city's] feet to the fire, and, frankly, they look to us and our constituencies for help and advice," says Rene Cazenave, SFIC director.

EZ/EC National Learning Initiative

Developed in 1995 and administered by the Community Partnership Center at the University of Tennessee, the Learning Initiative has focused on the rural side of the Clinton Administration's Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community program (the EZ/EC program).

The EZ/EC planning and application process made clear that heavy community involvement was a prerequisite to groups seeking funding. The Learning Initiative (LI) was designed to foster continuing citizen involvement in monitoring, learning, and action in ten rural EZ/EC communities. Funded initially by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Ford Foundation, and the Rural Economic Policy Program of the Aspen Institute, the LI was intended to provide a national assessment for federal officials.

The initiative draws heavily from the traditions of participatory research and popular education, including those of the Highlander Center, whose former director now is co-director of the Community Partnership Center. It provides a means for community representatives to measure their EZ/EC program's progress and recommend mid-course corrections to the agencies running the program. The LI design is radically different from traditional evaluations that rely on outside experts, which often examine and report on the success or failure of a program very late in its implementation or after its completion.

Organized into learning teams of between 8 and 20 local volunteers, each LI has a part-time paid coordinator. Participants decide which of the EZ/EC program's local goals are most important to them. Using a flexible evaluation tool designed by the Partnership Center, each team does its own monitoring, analysis, and reporting. Experienced "regional researchers" are available to assist.

Although the LI's long-term results won't be known for a while, as of last summer there were several examples of local impact. In Jackson County, Kentucky, the team conducted intensive interviews and attended over 400 EZ meetings as it monitored the program. Along the way, it uncovered numerous questionable, if not corrupt, transactions. A spokesman for the county's power structure labeled the initiative's findings "not only ignorant, but stupid." But national observers viewed the report as balanced, and the respected Louisville Courier-Journal took the learning team's side, editorializing, "Count us among the stupid."

In McDowell County, West Virginia, the learning team conducted an exhaustive "social capacity audit" to create a baseline for measuring "community revitalization." The county's first-ever survey of 15 community sectors, including churches, social service agencies, government institutions, media, business and arts, taught the county it had a lot more going for it than anyone had realized.

One member of the team summarized: "I'll never again be part of any evaluation performed by an outside consultant. The quality and utility of what we can do on our own-with proper and sufficient assistance as we have had from a person knowledgeable about and committed to participatory research and evaluation-far surpasses any 'professional' evaluation I've ever seen."

Community Catalyst, Massachusetts and Nationwide

Community Catalyst, formerly the Boston office of Families USA, was created in 1997 to provide technical assistance and training to statewide organizations that apply CMLA approaches to health care issues. Community Catalyst aims to demystify health care issues and institutionalize policy analysis and community organizing among consumers. Success stories come from such organizations as Health Care for All (HCFA) in Massachusetts and the Oregon Health Action Campaign (OHAC).

HCFA, whose offices Community Catalyst shares in Boston, is legendary for transforming itself from an effective coalition of advocacy groups into an organization accountable to low- and middle-income grassroots activists who now permeate the board and every level of the organization.

HCFA's Health Care Helpline is a tool for collecting data on health issues while bringing thousands of new people into the organization, getting them access to care, and encouraging people to become active on their own behalf and work with others with similar problems. People identified through the Helpline (and other vehicles) are organized into campaigns usually involving participatory learning. For example, when HCFA received an increasing number of phone calls from working poor families in desperate need of health care, they invited several callers to discuss their problems with each other. It soon became clear that the state's special program of health insurance for working people with limited incomes suffered from low visibility and limited outreach. Through this process, HCFA builds credibility with consumers, state legislators, hospital officials, and other decision-makers.

Another example of HCFA's use of participatory learning is Boston's at Risk 2000 Project, which brought together community leaders from many different organizations, neighborhoods, and ethnic groups in a 10-month process to explore their views of health, discuss their experiences with the health care system, and build a vision of a reorganized system. The leaders then joined with HCFA's Boston Health Access Project in an on going "people's health council" to monitor, assess, and press for changes in the system. Community Catalyst is now helping statewide health care reform groups around the country adapt the methodology of the Boston at Risk 2000 Project.

Using the Boston at Risk 2000 model, community leaders analyzed a report by a Harvard public health professor on the area's major teaching hospitals' financial conditions and assets. As a result, the Boston Health Access Coalition demanded that the nonprofit teaching hospitals allocate more of their assets to community benefits. Millions of dollars were reallocated to health centers in needy neighborhoods throughout the city.

In Oregon, when Medicaid clients were unable to find primary care physicians under the managed care system, OHAC helped them research how they could change the situation. The clients conducted a phone survey of all listed physicians for health plans and learned there was only one open practice. When they saw the report, previously unresponsive state policy makers now paid attention. Within months, state officials focused on primary care capacity, and one health plan established a new primary care clinic.

Lessons from CMLA

Central to CMLA is the tie between (1) research, monitoring, and evaluation and (2) learning and action by affected constituencies. No community-developed data or documents sit on dust-covered shelves where many reports of costly research and evaluation projects can be found. Research and monitoring in CMLA strategies are designed to make change, based solidly on factual analysis and the direct experience of those most affected by the policies.

CMLA's effectiveness depends largely on local people's ability to control the direction of all aspects of a project, from the initial identification of an issue important to many people locally, to envisioning and designing the project's elements.

Most projects not only employ a competent, trusted staff of an adequate size but a method of rewarding low-income participants with stipends or other remuneration. High quality, consistent outside assistance is usually required for research and organization-building components. Research tools must be meticulously designed and tested to ensure that they answer the appropriate questions and are easy for ordinary people to use. Finally, the learning process should include such contextual issues as popular economics and community history. Naturally, all this requires sufficient, flexible, and reliable funding.

The fact that some CMLA projects have aroused strong opposition might be considered a testament to their effectiveness. In most of the experiences cited, the "battle lines" have been or were drawn, and the opposition has fought back hammer and tong.

Two examples among many crystallized this problem during our survey of projects. In San Diego, the work of the Environmental Health Coalition, and its Salud Ambiental, Latinas Tomando Accion (SALTA) project, meaning Environmental Health, Latinas Taking Action, have targeted the city's Port Commission among others. The school system, aroused by publicity about toxic hazards seriously harming children in the elementary school and pressed by EHC, joined the fight against the Port Commission's methyl bromide fumigation practices. The Port Commission responded by filing a lawsuit against the School District and the EHC charging "civil conspiracy to damage the Port." While the suit had no merit from the moment it was filed, the time and money required to battle back has been enormous, and resources for doing so are difficult to come by.

Barriers to Strengthening and Extending Community-Based Monitoring

Our survey also uncovered some very practical problems (aside from societal conditions) that impede the progress and restrict the potential of these research and learning strategies.

As might be anticipated, survey respondents mentioned more than any other issue the lack of resources for monitoring and action strategies as a major barrier to maximizing CMLA's potential. The lack of philanthropic support for CMLA is, indeed, stunning. Other than the rural Learning Initiative (LI), we were unable to find current examples of foundation-funded multi-site projects to help citizens use CMLA strategies to affect devolution or other policy issues central to lower income people and their communities.

Further, the lion's share of support for the LI, and all the funding for the CDBG monitoring work, was from government rather than private funders. Most foundations, when supporting community based research approaches, have tended to do it one community at a time. Very little of the limited funding grassroots groups can hope to obtain is provided for their most crucial, basic needs, including constituency capacity building, monitoring, planning and organizing. Even less support goes to community-based groups-alone or in coalitions-for advocacy strategies aimed at affecting public policy.

Targets of Opportunity

Rapid policy change emanating from Washington and the continued growth of income inequality create new urgency to put CMLA into practice in local communities. Community-based efforts in every area-including public housing preservation, jobs for welfare recipients, education reform, health care access, senior services, and food stamps-require new thinking and strategies. Each of these areas would benefit from community organizing to monitor and assess effects of policy, program, and regulatory changes, and to work for quick mid-course corrections; demonstrate new programs that fit new governmental requirements and challenge stale thinking; and devise new working relationships in which collaboration is necessary to bring positive change.

"Comprehensive community initiatives" and EZ/ECs, funded by foundations and the federal government with a fair degree of "top-down" influence, would also benefit from CMLA's "ground-up" perspective. And local participants would learn more about broader policy issues affecting the entire community.

As poor people feel the pinch of policy changes and budget cuts, their desire to learn what can be done opens many doors for enlarging community-based constituencies engaged in participatory learning and education. It will be critical to help community-based groups do more than mobilize outrage and apply band-aids. They could delve into policy issues, research and learn about alternative approaches, educate allies, and then use that learning and community organizing process to take strategic advantage of this era of change.

Larry Parachini is an independent consultant to community-based organiations, regional and national public policy and advocacy organizations, private foundations, and other institutions concerned with social justice and change. Andy Mott is Deputy Executive Director of the Center for Community Change. Susan Rees is an independent researcher and writer working in Washington, DC.

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