Community Assessments
Presentation for the Nutrition, Environment, & Food Systems for Empowerment Internship Program
Sharon Lezberg6/2015
Presenter Information
My involvement in NEFSE• Mentor, along with Joe
Hankey, for the Brentwood Gardens for Empowerment Project
Sharon LezbergCommunity Resource Development Educator,Dane County-UW Extension
What is a community assessment?- Identification of assets, needs, and community
characteristics- A tool used to understand issues within a
community
Where are we now? Where do we want to be in the
future? How do we get to the future we
desire?
Other Terms Utilized
Diagnosis
Situati onal Analysis
Data Gathering, Asset Mapping
Needs Assessment
What is a Situational Analysis?
• Collecting• Analyzing• Delivering
Information
•Past Trends•Current
Conditions Issues Problems Opportunities Challenges
About
Context
Community CulturalPolitical
Historical
A systematic method for:
A Word About Assets and Needs
• Assets are those resources that exist within a community and can be used to help meet community needs.
• Community needs are “the gap between what a situation is and what it should be” (University of Kansas Work Group for Community Health and Development)
Building Community Capacity• “Community’s ability to define and solve
their own problems” (D. Easterling, The Colorado Trust)
• Ability to provide “local solutions to local problems” (R. Atkinson & P. Willis, University of Tasmania)
Why do Community Assessment? To gain an understanding of the community,
including demographics, natural resource base, infrastructure, and systems (health, economic, etc.)
In order to serve a community, you need to understand it
Used to identify assets and needs Essential in planning: understand the past, evaluate
the present, prepare for the future To test assumptions and relevance of activities,
projects
What are the underlying issues?- Use questions and research to get below the surface- In community work, it takes time to build trust- Accept that individuals within a community will have different interpretations of a situation
Steps in a Community Assessment
• Define the Purpose & Scope
• Identify Collaborators
• Collect Data– Gather existing data– Identify data gaps– Collect & analyze required information
• Determine Key Findings
• Set Priorities and Create an Action Plan
Define Purpose and Scope
• Identify community issue to be assessed, the impacted community members, and the geographic area to access
• Determine key questions that you want answered
• Be sure that your questions are related to the purpose of the assessment
Identify Collaborators
• Community members should be engaged in planning and implementation
• Collaboration with other partners (corporations, nonprofit organizations, local community organizations) will increase access to data and to resources
• Establishes relationships that will be important for implementation and action
Collect Data
• Collect Data– Gather existing data– Identify data gaps– Collect & analyze required information– Present the information to community partners– Analyze the information, with community
partners
Data Sources
• Secondary Data: demographic data from Census, American Community Survey, other sources. In Wisconsin, the Applied Population Laboratory is a great source of data.
• Secondary data may be for geographic areas that are larger in scope than your project area, and the data – if aggregated data – may mask disparities across populations.
Gather your own Assessment Data
– Surveys– Asset Mapping– Informal Dialogue– Key Informant Interviews– Focus Groups– SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities,
Threats)– Network Analysis– Ethnography
How do you Gather data from people who are marginalized, vulnerable, or
hard to reach?
• Participatory techniques– Participatory appraisal: needs matrix, community
asset mapping, social resource mapping– Photo voice– Community dialogues & visioning
• Personal observation
Photo Voice
Determine Key Findings
Purposes of key findings:- They validate anecdotal evidence of community
needs and assets.- They highlight significant trends found in the
data collection process.- They reveal differences across segments of the
community- They help clarify answers to the community
assessment’s key questions.
Set Priorities and Create an Action Plan
• Setting priorities through community process• Action/implementation Planning:
– Key finding (issue)– Activity or response– Deadline– Person responsible– Indicators of success