4

Community Power: Approaches and Models

The third session of the workshop showcased existing models for community-based learning and evaluation, each grounded in principles of power building and in asset-based, people-centered frameworks. The session featured presentations on using quantitative and qualitative data in antiracist work, community planning to incorporate resident voices in development decisions, and the positive deviance community-based

approach to solving public health problems. Lourdes Rodríguez, senior program officer at St. David’s Foundation, moderated the session.

THE MEASURE CARE MODEL

Meme Styles, founder and president at MEASURE, discussed the historical gap in equitable data tools and the work being conducted to fill it. MEASURE is a nonprofit, social enterprise in Austin, Texas, that uses an antiracist revenue model to provide free data support to Black- and Brown-led organizations. To provide this free data support, MEASURE asks white-led corporations, organizations, and universities to pay the full rate for services.¹ The organization uses the CARE (community, advocacy, resilience, and evidence) model in working with community groups to build power and use data in generating solutions and advocating for change.

Filling an Equitable Data Tools Gap

Styles described that racism data and research is complex, and it can be perverse and opportunistic. Having the potential to perpetuate racism, this research can treat people of color as “petri dishes,” by analyzing them and applying methodological frameworks to explain their experiences without ever asking them about those experiences. In an effort to address the lack of accessibility of equitable data tools, MEASURE provides free data support to Black- and Brown-led organizations. Styles explained their team is comprised of Black and Brown female data activists; the team includes doctors, lawyers, scientists, mothers, college students, and people recently released from incarceration. Adding lived experience to quantitative data, the group takes research to action by mobilizing the community to generate solutions.

The Black, Indigenous, and people-of-color communities have been betrayed by traditional academia, data collection, and research, said Styles. To disrupt the traditional research methodologies created in an environment of structural racism, MEASURE has developed evaluation tools to combine qualitative and quantitative data about complex social problems affecting people of color. The organization’s evaluation tools have gone through an extensive community-led process to ensure that MEASURE authentically represents the people with whom it works. Styles added that the group routinely evaluates its tools and processes to make sure the work it conducts is antiracist. MEASURE’s antiracist revenue model provides services at a full rate to white-led groups and organizations

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¹ More information about MEASURE is available at https://wemeasure.org (accessed February 21, 2021).

with the economic means to afford data services, while providing Black- and Brown-led organizations services at no charge; this model has been appealing to other organizations in Austin, Texas, and beyond.

The CARE Model

Styles emphasized that until an equitable framework is built into public administration models, tools, and health systems, the risk of the continual cycle of racism remains within the largest American social services and institutions. Thus, MEASURE was intentional in developing equitable tools that use data to create change. The result is the CARE model, a system she described as “game changing” (see Figure 4-1). This model breaks the community mobilization process into four components: community, advocacy, resilience, and evidence. Organizations and institutions can use the CARE model with any issue they are partnering with communities to address, whether it be health, criminalization, or voting rights. Increasing meaningful community engagement while minimizing potential trauma or harm to that community, the CARE model is based on the following four guiding principles: (1) community is involved from the beginning; (2) advocacy within communities is used to address disparities, resulting in power building; (3) solutions are generated that strengthen community resilience; and (4) data and evidence inform decision making.

Methodology of the CARE Model

Styles provided an overview of the methodology of the CARE model, which requires 3 months to complete. Each time MEASURE is invited to work with an organization, it strives to initiate a robust partnership. The work begins with a community engagement phase, during which understanding and alignment on the issue is developed, empathy for the target community is cultivated, and sociocultural cohesion is strengthened. This process involves a thorough understanding of what has taken place to perpetuate injustice in the community around the issue at hand. The second phase is community planning, which involves a needs assessment of the target community, solution development, and a community action plan. The final phase of community implementation includes raising awareness, implementing solutions, and evaluating outcomes. CARE teams are formed to identify community impact metrics for tracking progress on outcomes and outputs. These data are then used to assess the group’s theory of change.

Effect of the CARE Model in Central Texas

Styles described the effect of the CARE model implemented in central Texas. The Innocence Initiative is an award-winning program that has trained more than 700 attorneys to protect Black girls from adultification bias.^2,3 This effort led to the creation of a community-created policy brief that is informing new laws in Texas, along with the distribution of “15,500 community-created comic books about Black girl magic.” The program has launched a mentorship program that matches Black girls with Black women, in addition to providing them with food, monthly cash stipends, and access to two Black women psychologists who are part of the program’s team.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, MEASURE was able to rapidly convene its community around the proven CARE model, Styles explained. It conducted a needs assessment, collecting more than 900 responses from people of color regarding how they were affected by the pandemic. This assessment helped drive resources back to the community and quickly drive change during a crisis. Additionally, the CARE model has achieved legislative impact through the formation of “increasing equity” circles,

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² More information about the Innocence Initiative is available at https://wemeasure.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/MEASURE_-The-Innocence-Initiative-2020-School-Local-Policy-Brief-1.pdf (accessed February 22, 2021).

³ Adultification bias “is the perception of Black children as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers” (Epstein et al., 2017).

which are groups that work to change legislation affecting their communities. Styles gave the example of a small town that created a new law to form the first equity commission. She noted that an unexpected outcome of using the CARE model has been the launch of new nonprofits led by people of color.

Next Steps for the CARE Model

Styles said MEASURE is grappling with the best ways to increase impact, including fundraising efforts. In 2020, the organization offered a college course on data activism at Huston-Tillotson University, a local historically Black college. Prioritizing equity and research, the course was developed with the goal of creating a pipeline of Black and Brown researchers. The pilot class during fall semester of 2020 was successful and was offered again with a second cohort the following semester. Styles added that MEASURE is working to bring this course to Texas State University in the fall of 2021. Additionally, MEASURE is training CARE model facilitators who will work with organizations serving people of color. The goal is to recruit 20 new certified MEASURE educators to use the organization’s tools with other groups, Styles added. This would expand the capacity of the group, which was able to provide 1,239 hours of free data support to Black- and Brown-led organizations in 2020. MEASURE is also working to affect the research community, she said. To help disrupt traditional research methods, the organization is training researchers at major institutions on how to the use the CARE model and other activist-created tools.

HEALTHY RICHMOND COLLECTIVE-BUILDING POLICY INITIATIVE

Roxanne Carrillo Garza, senior director at Healthy Richmond,⁴ works with resident leaders, community-based organizations, base builders, and systems leaders to develop collective policy advocacy strategies to improve health, safety, school and neighborhood environments, and economic development opportunities. She outlined her organization’s vision statements and its strategies for power building in economic, educational, and health equity.

Healthy Richmond is a collective-building policy initiative in the San Francisco Bay area launched by The California Endowment 10 years ago, Garza explained. The group approaches policy advocacy by partnering

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⁴ More information about Healthy Richmond is available at https://healthyrichmond.net (accessed February 23, 3021).

with resident leaders, organizations, and system allies to work toward health equity and racial justice. In 2019, the group held several racial equity dialogues in order to update its vision, purpose, and horizon statements to guide race equity work over the following 3 years (see Box 4-1). Garza noted that these statements include explicit language regarding race equity and eliminating anti-Black racism, thus positioning the organization to meet the moment as the events of 2020 unfolded.⁵

Building Power for Education Equity

To address education equity, Healthy Richmond has supported parent and student leaders in advocating within the local school district. Garza stated that in 2014, the school district underestimated parents’ ability to understand the complexities of California legislation, called the Local Control Funding Formula, that then-Governor Jerry Brown put into place to help close equity gaps for specific student populations. She noted that over the next 7 years, parent and student leadership demonstrated that they were indeed able to understand the complexities of the legislation. They also engaged in the following activities:

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⁵ On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was killed during an arrest by a policeman who knelt on his neck for more than 8 minutes. Widely shared video footage of Floyd’s death led to worldwide protests calling for racial justice and the end of police brutality.

• Researching the data on the district’s academic performance;
• Creating the We Are the Experts curriculum to train peers on how to be civically engaged;
• Consulting with regional experts on school-based, social-emotional health models;
• Looking at the legal implications of the district’s decision-making processes at the local level; and
• Developing annual policy platforms and presenting these to the superintendent and school board.

The group has built power and a voice within the school district, backing policies on positive school climate and a resolution on African American achievement that successfully passed. Current efforts focus on creating a racial equity community oversight council, which would allow parents to work in partnership with the school board to define what racial equity in the district looks like. Thus far, the school board has not been supportive of this step, Garza noted.

Strategies for Power Building in Education

In Healthy Richmond’s education equity efforts, Garza said that five key strategies have emerged. The first strategy is to create safe spaces for participation. She explained that encouraging community members to become actively engaged in policy discussions and decisions requires more than inviting them to meetings, particularly when the community members have historically been excluded. Real engagement calls for thoughtful attention to community cultures and contexts in creating spaces for discussion that feel safe and welcoming. This involves taking time to break down policy jargon, encouraging questions and discussion, and having bilingual staff in place to enable participants to speak in their native languages.

The second strategy is to invest in “reach” to ensure broad participation. Healthy Richmond developed training that includes a focus on aligning messages and creating common scripts, which enables clear, accurate, consistent information to be shared during the recruitment engagement process. Garza said partners need to recognize how difficult it can be for community members to participate in workshops or trainings, given their work schedules and family demands. This informs the third strategy, creating paths for community engagement at different levels. Not every resident will be able or willing to go to a board meeting, Garza noted. Offering an array of paths for engagement of varying degrees of intensity allows for greater participation. These paths can include workshops, town halls, school district advisory committee meetings, and intensive

organizing trainings. By affording parents and students a range of opportunities to participate, they can choose to engage in ways that feel comfortable to them and meet their needs.

Fourth, cultivating strategic relationships and community is key to power building, said Garza. Supporting relationship building between parents, advocacy organizations, and school leaders provides parents with direct connections to the decision makers and organizations that can help them achieve their goals. Strong relationships across families are also needed to create a sense of solidarity across cultures, thus rooting advocacy efforts in a strong sense of unity. Garza described this step as critical to the work. Lastly, allocating time to reflect and celebrate is the fifth strategy for power building, because community celebrations can help residents remain motivated and hopeful. Taking time to learn from any missteps and reflect on opportunities to conduct future campaigns in different ways fosters resilience in facing the persistent challenges presented by these systems, she added.

Building Power for Economic Justice

Using an approach built on the foundation of community organizing, Healthy Richmond worked with North Richmond resident leaders to create a quality-of-life plan. Garza explained that the plan was intended to highlight residents’ priorities and aspirations for their community to inform future development. Healthy Richmond worked with resident leaders to (1) facilitate a deeper understanding of their leadership and change-making potential, (2) use their voices to hold stakeholders accountable, and (3) exercise real power. A team of ten resident leaders conducted an analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within their neighborhood. Engaging more than 200 residents, leaders conducted resident interviews and held focus groups in eight thematic areas. They used this qualitative data to create an assessment of community needs, which they presented during a community visioning session. Next, leaders conducted public planning sessions focused on housing, local entrepreneurship, youth center planning, and community wealth building. Garza noted that the focus on community wealth building was born out of conversations about community safety. In those discussions, residents determined it was not a larger police presence that was needed to increase neighborhood safety, but rather greater community wealth.

The comprehensive quality-of-life plan has the potential to inform the county’s planning efforts, Garza described. During the process of creating the plan, the Healthy Richmond team learned that the county was updating its general plan, presenting an opportunity to integrate community plans into the updated general plan, which will drive the development

neighborhoods in the county for the next 40 years. Furthermore, 10 acres of neighborhood land will be redeveloped from housing authority property to new use. Garza expressed her hope that the quality-of-life plan would inform the redevelopment of 10 acres of neighborhood land.

Strategies for Power Building in Economic Justice

In the development of the quality-of-life plan,⁶ Healthy Richmond used four key drivers of change, Garza said. The first strategy is leveraging the inherent strength of residents. As residents are best equipped to solve their own community needs and problems, Healthy Richmond worked to ensure that it was the residents driving the process. This approach sets the stage for enduring change that is embedded within the community. The next strategy is equipping residents with an understanding of how policy and systems work. In supporting resident leaders, Healthy Richmond provided them with tools and training in effectively navigating the different systems involved in this work. Third, Healthy Richmond attended to bridging cross-cultural connections. The population of the North Richmond community is approximately half Latino and half African American. Garza noted that during the first few meetings, participants divided themselves in the room by race. However, by the end of the project, cross-racial collaboration on presentations was taking place. “It was really amazing to see the work in terms of multiracial, intergenerational backgrounds that can be unified for shared vision for their community,” said Garza. This work involved being intentional and sensitive in fostering multiracial alliances and cross-racial solidarity. The fourth strategy is building collective capacity by learning, organizing, and advocating together. The North Richmond residents became a source of strength for one another, incorporating healthy feedback structures to improve the quality of work and connect with each other on a personal level. Garza said that at the end of the project, residents said they felt that they were a family, which she found profoundly meaningful.

Power Building for Health Equity

Healthy Richmond is working for health equity, or “health for all,” with an action team supporting power-building strategies for residents. The organization conducted a series of listening sessions with community groups that had difficulty accessing health services across the three health systems in the area: Kaiser Permanente, the county health department,

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⁶ See https://healthyrichmond.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03QoL-digital-enlish.pfd (accessed July 17, 2021).

and a local community health clinic. examined how these health systems and the culture of the system create barriers. Garza noted that social determinants of health are often the focus in public health; although these are important, the culture of the system is often a problem.

Healthy Richmond created a Health Equity Dine and Learn series by enlisting residents, referred to as “community health advocates,” in an ongoing process. These meetings bring community health advocates, health system administrators, and health providers together to discuss approaches, strategies, and best practices in reducing barriers to accessing care. These events are a space in which community health advocates build their power and voice through engaging with the health care leaders making decisions that affect the community. By working to integrate patient voices more fully into the decision-making process, this collaborative effort seeks to change structures in the health care system. This effort has been underway for four years and has poised Healthy Richmond to be actively involved in providing COVID-19 response efforts with the health department. Garza said her organization is pushing the health department to build an infrastructure that can address inequities beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.

Next Steps for Healthy Richmond

Within the context of the nation now reckoning with the historical, generational racism in U.S. systems, Garza stated Healthy Richmond is determining how best to drive its work forward. This involves assessing the current level of collective power and intentionally using strategies to build power across its county. Strategic data and investment in the resident leadership models used in recent years are needed, as well as efforts to develop bridging relationships with systems, system leaders, and champions within systems. Garza noted this piece has been important in the health system in striving for an equitable rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. She described the last strategy of advancing accountability as the most challenging component of the work. Policy wins in the absence of advancing accountability will not lead to true culture change and reallocation of resources, Garza concluded.

THE POSITIVE DEVIANCE APPROACH

Arvind Singhal, Samuel and Edna Marston Endowed Professor and director of the Social Justice Initiative at The University of Texas at El Paso, discussed the positive deviance approach, which is based on the belief that communities are endowed with the wisdom, the power, and the resources to solve their own problems. He noted that over the past

17 years, he has used this approach to illuminate, address, and solve problems in dozens of communities in dozens of countries, across most continents, including the border area of El Paso, Texas, where he lives. He illustrated the concepts behind this approach with stories of uncommon perspectives given by historical figures, before giving an example of what this approach looks like in practice (Singhal, in press).

Paraphrasing Lao Tzu, a Chinese philosopher from ancient times, Singhal said that in the positive deviance approach, the role of the expert/outsider/interventionist/change agent is to “Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have.” The fundamental premise of the positive deviance approach is that regardless of the issue, and no matter its complexity, there exist people in every community who have already solved the problem. This applies to issues such as food insecurity and malnutrition, low rates of cancer screening, poor diabetes control, teenage pregnancy, high school dropout rates, hospital acquired infections, and other topics (Singhal and Dura, 2009; Singhal et al., 2010). Furthermore, Singhal contended that not only do people exist who have solved the problem, they have done so while facing the highest odds and with no additional resources. The positive deviance approach assumes this is possible through a “flipped” way of thinking that involves asking questions that have not been previously asked, while also asking and acting in a new way. To describe this further, Singhal provided three examples.

Narrative Examples of Positive Deviance Thinking

President Abraham Lincoln is said to have been asked by a soldier: “Mr. President, you are tall. How tall are you?” Singhal said. President Lincoln’s reply was something like “Son, like you, I am tall enough that my feet reach the ground.” Singhal noted this is not the way we typically think. Height is usually conceptualized in measurements of length. Lincoln’s answer implies that wisdom does not lie with the one who is the tallest or with the president and commander-in-chief; rather, wisdom is commonly distributed. This represents a new way of thinking, said Singhal.

Singhal recounted that when he was 17 years old, he began a correspondence with Mother Teresa and he became a collector of her life stories. One such story dates back to 1974, when Mother Teresa arrived in Washington, DC, and was greeted by hundreds of people. Those welcoming her were holding placards asking if she would join them the following day in a march against the Vietnam War. Mother Teresa is said to have declined to march against the war, but said she would be the first to lead a march for peace. Mother Teresa was indicating that frames are important, said Singhal. That is, she was suggesting asking a different set of

questions. Rather than focusing on the problem, on what is not working, on what are the gaps and needs, people can ask instead: What are we for? What are our assets and strengths? What is working?

Lastly, Singhal told a story of Mahatma Gandhi. When traveling by train, Gandhi always rode in third class. He was often asked by his fellow Indians, “Bapu (Father), why do you travel third class? You are the father of the Indian nation.” Gandhi’s reply: “I travel third class because, as you know, there is no fourth class.” Singhal noted this way of thinking and acting is completely outside the norm.

Practical Application of the Positive Deviance Approach

These three stories illustrate a different way of thinking that can be used in understanding how communities hold the power to solve problems, said Singhal. While the concept of “positive deviance” appeared in literature in the 1960s, Jerry and Monique Sternin were the first to operationalize it in the positive deviance approach.⁷ In the early 1990s, the Sternins went to Vietnam to address rampant malnutrition (Sternin and Choo, 2000). Rather than asking, “Why are 65 percent of kids under the age of 5 severely malnourished in Vietnam?” they asked, “Are there children from very poor households who are well nourished?” Singhal stated that living in a probabilistic world, this question seems an impossible one, a question to which no regression equation will lead. Yet, working in 4 communities with 3,000 children under the age of 5, the Sternins found approximately two dozen children (less than 1 percent) were well nourished even though they came from very poor families. This demonstrates that the wisdom to solve malnutrition and provide access to food security already existed among this group of families. These families were the statistical deviants in not fitting the norm, and they were positive deviants in having solved the problem (Singhal, 2010). The positive deviance approach is data driven and allows for determining what is working for those who successfully overcome a problem that also affects others in their communities.

After identifying the positive deviance families, the Sternins then explored what these families were doing that other families were not. They discovered that some mothers were using the greens of sweet potato plants and tiny shrimp and crabs from the rice fields, and adding them to the meals. These resources were accessible to all but not part of what children were typically fed. Furthermore, the Sternins learned that some mothers were actively feeding their children to ensure that no food was

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⁷ More information about the evolution of the positive deviance approach is available at https://positivedeviance.org/background (accessed February 24, 2021).

wasted; this behavior was not the norm, as most children were left to eat by themselves. Some mothers were breaking meals into smaller portions, feeding children three to four times per day, rather than twice per day. Smaller meals led to better assimilation of nutrients. Singhal said that while the natural inclination is to tell others about nuggets of wisdom (i.e., best practices) once they are gleaned, the positive deviance approach involves yet another difference from the norm. Instead of telling or showing people new information, the approach involves creating the conditions for people to act out these newly discovered, but uncommon and replicable, behaviors (Singhal and Svenkerud, 2019). In this case, mothers were asked to forage for sweet potato greens and tiny shrimp and crabs, and to bring these to cooking sessions. The mothers attended these sessions and cooked together. They actively fed their children and tracked their children’s progress. Within a span of 5 years, 85 percent of those Vietnamese children who were involved in the initiative were well nourished (Pascale et al., 2010). Singhal remarked that these communities in Vietnam solved their problem through their own wisdom and resources. Singhal concluded his remarks with a quote from Robert Frost: “We dance ‘round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows.”

DISCUSSION

Effect of Personal Narrative on Career

Rodríguez opened the discussion with a quote from Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset: “Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia, y si no la salvo a ella no me salvo yo” (Ortega y Gasset, 1914). She translated this as, “I am myself and my circumstance. If I do not articulate it, I cannot explain who I am.” With that quote in mind, Rodríguez asked each speaker to share how their circumstance, journey, elders, and community have shaped their work and who they are.

Styles responded that people rarely consider how ancestors’ work, trauma, and love for community have shaped the work currently carried out by social justice workers. She provided a brief family history, beginning with her grandfather, who was a police commissioner in Northern California and served as a liaison between the Black Panther Party and his community. Styles’s father was a Black Panther, and she speculated that dinner conversations in a household with a police commissioner and a member of the Black Panther Party must have been interesting. Her father became the vice president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and she grew up under that pulpit. Styles described that “breathing in” that history affirms her work and

serves as a reminder to constantly be willing to learn from one’s community. She noted that her grandfather was a leader who used his capacity to listen to his community, allowing it to shape the way he moved through the world. For example, he provided economic resources and hired people within his community to work in the stores he built. Styles said she uses his memory as an invitation to continue to do this work in a conscious way that prioritizes listening.

Singhal recounted that while he was a visiting professor at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, the Dalai Lama spoke on campus and began his talk by saying that every time he is on a university campus, he is reminded that the buildings were created to cultivate habits of the head. The Dalai Lama asked, “In addition to these institutions that cultivate habits of the head, where are the institutions, the frameworks, and models that create the conditions for cultivating the habits of the heart?” The longest journey that every person takes, the Dalai Lama continued, a journey which may not even be completed in a lifetime—is the sacred distance between the head and the heart. Referring to the prior examples of Lao Tzu, Abraham Lincoln, Mother Teresa, and Mahatma Gandhi, Singhal said they were all able to connect the head and heart. People working in the space of power building should challenge themselves to create the conditions to connect the head and the heart, Singhal suggested. The conceptualization of power, Singhal believes needs to be reframed as “power to” and “power with” instead of the normative frame of “power over.”

Garza recalled that her grandmother immigrated to the United States as an orphaned child, her parents having died of tuberculosis and her siblings separated from one another. She eventually started a family in the town of Tulare in the San Joaquin Valley in California. Garza’s parents met in Tulare while working as farm laborers alongside their parents. They moved to Los Angeles, where her father became a commercial artist. However, he encountered many inequities in his field and to challenge them, her father became a union organizer, striving to make Spanish-speaking artists visible. Garza’s mother had three children and then dedicated herself to becoming a public health nurse, earning her registered nursing degree when Garza was in high school. Garza said that she grew up watching her parents pay attention to what was happening in their community.

When she applied to the School of Social Welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles, Garza wrote about the trips to a park in downtown Los Angeles with her father and her siblings. They would sit on a park bench and watch the world around them, seeing poverty and homelessness, but also seeing beauty and the joy of immigrants recreating in the park. Garza attributes the fact that she and one of her siblings became social workers to these trips. She recalled being a “feisty child,”

with an internal fire about injustice burning inside her. In elementary school, one of her teachers called her parents to tell them that Garza became upset every time history and poverty were discussed. Even as a child, she wanted to change economic injustice. During her elementary and junior high school years, busing was still taking place in an attempt to integrate schools and address school inequities. Garza described watching the Democratic primary presidential debate on June 27, 2019, in which candidate Kamala Harris recounted being a child bused to school as part of an integration effort, and reacting, “Yes, me too!” Garza described her childhood experience of seeing the white community fighting—and winning—against integration attempts in the school system. She also witnessed bitter fights among students on campus as children acted on the messages they were getting from their parents. Garza said she cannot separate her soul from social justice and race equity work. Having been pushed out of systems after being labeled a “community advocate,” she noted that many colleagues have advised her to separate herself from her work. She has been told, “You are not what you do.” To this, she responds, “Well, I actually am, in this case.” Garza said she enjoys being on the outside and creating pathways for residents to be in the room where change efforts happen, pushing back on systems that have not made substantial strides in cultural change. “I hope that I can remain humble and serve the residents for the rest of my life,” she stated.

Documenting Community History

Rodríguez asked how lessons learned can be passed down and carried forward. She noted her dislike for a quote often attributed to Winston Churchill: “History is written by the victors.” The implication of this quote is that history is not always grounded in facts but rather in the winners’ interpretation of those facts. She prefers a quote by Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe, who said, “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Rodríguez asked how to ensure that the histories of the communities served are remembered and documented.

Styles explained that the first phase of the CARE model uses a timeline of injustice. When MEASURE works with a community, it spends days or even weeks developing a timeline of how the community has suffered from enslavement of their people, caging of their children, or other injustices that affect the problem the community is seeking to change. This process, which takes place before considering possible solutions, results in a document the team creates with the community and is eventually made into a poster. The intent is to make the history tangible and shareable,

facilitating the community and its members ability to communicate their stories.

Garza noted that Healthy Richmond’s website includes examples of the case studies and curricula that the organization has created, in addition to a video that residents produced. She said community members need avenues for voicing what they see as important. For example, when residents wanted to present their quality-of-life plan at a planning commission meeting, the county planning department said their attendance was unnecessary and they would ensure all commissioners received a copy. However, Garza knew the community needed to present their plan in person at the meeting, so she pushed for that to happen, and the presentation had a visible impact on the commissioners. She encouraged every unincorporated community to engage in a planning process similar to this. Garza said that organizers can facilitate the creation of spaces for residents to make their own documents, videos, and messaging and help them access avenues to present these materials in counties and cities.

Singhal pointed out that much discourse focuses on evidence-based practice. He believes the notion of “practice-based evidence” needs to be elevated (Singhal and Svenkerud, 2018). Positive deviance is simply a variation in practice that creates the conditions for something unique to a community to be acknowledged, identified, and amplified. A language shift can help root practice in this approach, he added.