Collaboration happens every day. From playgrounds and classrooms to workplaces and boardrooms, collaboration enables people to achieve shared goals. But collaboration alone won’t transform the systems that are failing youth and families of color and youth and families experiencing poverty. To create lasting change so that communities can thrive, we need to move beyond collaboration — we need to build strong civic infrastructure.
What makes civic infrastructure different from collaboration? Civic infrastructure focuses on outcomes rather than programs, uses data to improve, not just prove, and challenges traditional ways of working and take up ones that get population-level results. Communities across the country are building civic infrastructure, and supporting their work leads to better, more equitable results for kids and families.
Read the full post on Medium to dig into the differences between collaboration and civic infrastructure and see what this looks like in three communities: Bridgeport, Connecticut; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and San Antonio, Texas.