Areas of Practice

Our Approach

  • Rooted in culture, race, identity, and history
  • Community is the authority
  • Working at every scale, from place-based systems change to national field influence

How We Partner

  • Invited in to strengthen what already works, on the community’s terms
  • Community wisdom drives the decisions, data, and outcomes
  • Alongside as collaborators, from the start to the finish

Our Areas of Practice

1. Building Shared Understanding

Create visibility, shared language, and momentum for solutions rooted in culture, race, identity, and history at a national level, connecting research, policy, and community wisdom. 

Influence the field at large, increasing awareness, shifting mental models, shaping national conversations, building shared understanding, and shifting culture around equity and implementation.

This work focuses on shifting mental models, narratives, and norms that shape how systems and individuals understand evidence, equity, and effectiveness. It builds shared language and readiness for change, especially where dominant, Western frameworks have historically excluded community knowledge as evidence.

For Communities

  • Visibility of community-defined knowledge and cultural practices
  • Access to national learning spaces where lived experience is centered as evidence
  • Opportunities to shape the broader field, outside of their local programs and practices

For Funders

  • Increased readiness for equity-centered implementation
  • Shifts in mental models about ways of work and value placed on community-defined evidence
  • Alignment across stakeholders before investing in programs and practices
  • Reduced risk of harm caused by misaligned or extractive approaches

Technical Assistance Menu

  • Community of Practice 
    • National and regional learning spaces rooted in culture, race, identity, and history
  • Mental Model Shifts
    • Support in reframing “evidence,” “fidelity,” and “outcomes” to include engagement and cultural relevance
  • Field Briefs & Learning Products
    • Translating community wisdom into accessible tools for policymakers, funders, and practitioners
  • Cross-Site Learning & Convenings
    • Facilitated learning across communities and systems

2. Community-Driven Implementation & Capacity Building

Create visibility, shared language, and momentum for solutions rooted in culture, race, identity, and history at a national level, connecting research, policy, and community wisdom. 

Influence the field at large, increasing awareness, shifting mental models, shaping national conversations, building shared understanding, and shifting culture around equity and implementation.

This work focuses on shifting mental models, narratives, and norms that shape how systems and individuals understand evidence, equity, and effectiveness. It builds shared language and readiness for change, especially where dominant, Western frameworks have historically excluded community knowledge as evidence.

For Communities

  • Tools to adapt programs without losing cultural integrity
  • Enhanced capacity to lead implementation, evaluation, and sustainability
  • Control over data, definitions of success, and learning processes

For Funders

  • Stronger outcomes rooted in participant engagement
  • Greater return on investment through improved program delivery success
  • Evidence of effectiveness that reflects lived realities

Technical Assistance Menu

  • Cultural Relevance & Engagement Measure
    • Content Relevance and Participant Engagement Survey deployment
    • Community-defined indicators of engagement and trust
  • Implementation Coaching & Technical Assistance
    • Readiness for program implementation
    • Coaching for Evidence2Success
    • Program adaptation with fidelity to values and culture
  • Community-Led Data & Data Sovereignty
    • Youth Experiences Survey (YES)
    • Youth Well-being Measures
    • Community-designed surveys and learning cycles
  • Business Modeling & Sustainability Planning
    • Supporting culturally grounded programs to scale without extraction
  • Design of Intermediaries
    • Building infrastructure that protects community leadership while navigating systems

3. Systemic Transformation

Engage in partnerships with systems and communities to repair harm, transform structures, and co-create newly imagined and aligned ecosystems. Support the transformation of institutions and systems to promote collective healing, and embed engagement, culture, equity and belonging into how systems function.

This work is all about long-term partnerships focused on repairing harm, transforming structures, and shifting power. Rather than asking communities to fit into systems, we support systems to fundamentally change how they define evidence, accountability, and success.

For Communities

  • Movement towards repair of historical and ongoing harm
  • Shared decision-making authority
  • Systems that support healing rather than surveillance or punishment

For Funders

  • Sustainable, equitable reform rather than surface-level compliance
  • Stronger relationships with communities most impacted
  • Policy and practice alignment with real-world effectiveness

Technical Assistance Menu

  • Healing-Centered Systemic Change Model
    • Co-designing change strategies rooted in community healing
  • Deep Systems Partnership & Coaching
    • Multi-year engagement with state, county, or large systems
  • Redefining Evidence & Accountability
    • Expanding definitions of evidence to include engagement and cultural relevance
  • Policy & Practice Redesign
    • Supporting states and systems (e.g., FFPSA prevention planning) to embed equity at every level
  • Power-Sharing & Governance Design
    • Creating structures where community voice has real authority