A number of years ago I was the director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR), a comprehensive, communityinitiative focused on reducing poverty for the citizens of Hamilton, Ontario. The HRPR had the aspiration of making Hamilton the best place to raise a child. The change framework encouraged investments across five critical points in the lives of children, youth and their families: investing in the early years (0-6), helping kids to be successful in school, ensuring that kids complete high school successfully, providing bridges to post-secondary education and employment and working to build assets like savings accounts and home ownership.
In order to advance this aspiration and change framework, the Roundtable engaged a wide variety of community partners. Things began to happen and happen quickly, but it was really difficult to track.
To address this, the staff team at the HRPR developed an Outcomes Diary tool and recorded weekly the changes that were occurring. It was really excited to see what was happening in Hamilton, how people were working to reduce poverty and the impact that the Roundtable and its many community partners were making.
Attached is a link to a Resource at a Glance about developing and using an Outcomes Diary as a tool for tracking community change efforts. You will be surprised how a tool like this will begin to reveal the small scale and large scale changes occurring in your community.
Let me know if you find the Resource at a Glance useful and whether you have tried it in your community.