The Equity Center will create a collective impact infrastructure to strengthen, coordinate, and grow educational pipeline programs for African-American, Latinx, low-wealth and immigrant residents across the region. Our long-term goal is to address the educational deficits expressed by youth and adults, particularly the post-incarcerated population, through a network of programs. However, during its first three years, the Equity Center will focus its pipeline program on youth. The Equity Center pipeline program will support the region’s multiple organizations (the specific list will be determined in Year 1), which currently offer fragmented and often competing programs, with minimal evaluation of effectiveness. The Equity Center will network those programs in order to equalize access to educational resources for low-wealth, racial and ethnic minority middle- and high-school students. The process will be collaborative, with input from youth, service providers and experts so frameworks (including an evaluation framework) are not created in a top-down manner by UVA.

The Equity Center will offer technical assistance in grant writing and program evaluation; support research, data collection and analysis; help disseminate and communicate information to decision-makers; convene and coordinate existing program leaders; and help develop new programming to fill gaps in the network so as to contribute to a continuum of effective, evidence-based pipeline programs to help narrow racial achievement gaps in the region. A major focus of this work will be fostering infrastructure and networks that bring youth voice into local decision-making. Another example is the youth food justice internship and community food justice advocates as piece of this work. Over the past summer 7 high school students worked alongside 4 parents in building intergenerational leadership towards transforming our food system. They worked on goals and action planning for healthier school foods & democratizing the lunch line at Charlottesville City Schools. This plan was picked up by the Nutrition department. Over this school year, students are working alongside the nutrition department, CFJN organizational reps and parents to implement the advocacy action plan for healthier school meals. The Educational Pipeline programming will also include collaborations between UVA students and researchers and local youth to provide multi-leveled mentorship that will build social networks, capital and capacity for civic and democratic engagement across all those involved with the programs. This program will not provide direct services, dictate top-down evaluation frameworks or dominate pipeline programming. 

Research Practice Partnership
Faculty Directors: Bonnie Gordon & Nancy Deutsch
Community Directors: Daniel Fairley, Leah Puryear & and Joy Johnson