Our topic is #78 Pittsburgh After School: Providing Learning Opportunities to Keep Kids Off the Street. Through our exploration of the topic we have come across policy concerns and social coming together. Our detailed report can be viewed on the given below link.
Timeline
By Wenzhu Liu
After one month studying, I have learned how to combine policy with design, and how to realize a better policy by means of design. Before taking this class, I have little knowledge about policy especially how to formulate a policy, and I seldom think about the role of a designer playing on a policy.
What impressed me most deeply are two lectures: Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Get Started. For the first lecture, it prompts me to think more rather than just listening more. As social innovation, it means “A novel solution to a social problem that is more effective, efficient, or sustainable than existing solutions and for which the value created accrues primarily to society as a whole rather than private individuals.” Prior to this class, I just reckoned innovation is always easy to be accepted because it has a lot of advantages, but in the later content, I saw that “Getting a new idea adopted, even when it has obvious advantages, is often very difficult.” This reminds me I should think before getting a conclusion. To realize a new idea, it needs not only innovative, efficient, and effective, but also financial support, enough time and so on. This process inspires me to think a lot before accepting.
And for the latter lecture, it focuses more on how to implement a social innovation design. There are a lot of details such as brainstorming, Collaging & Art, the problem tree and interviews with experts, to encourage us getting started. The way for brainstorming using sticky notes like affinity diagram, and when we stuck in a few ideas, this method helps us get out of trouble. We three wrote almost 170 ideas after brainstorming. It is so efficient.
For our team project, we choose the 78th policy: Providing Learning Opportunities to Keep Kids Off the Street among 100 policies to change Pittsburgh. Before we researched, we allocated each people different parts of research. My part is about students behavior. According to the topic, there are some questions for starting research and I searched many websites and articles to investigate them.
1. What is important for a child’s development?
I have read an article about children’s development, and there are some important tips related to children’s activities after school. For example, for the age of 8 years, parents should facilitate and support the child’s playtime with friends and in extra-curricular school activities.
2. What kinds of parents are good for kids?
I found that good parents should be warm, willing to set limits and unwilling to breach a child’s psychological boundaries by invoking shame or guilt.
3. What are the reasons of students dropping school?
There are 3 main reasons: lack of parent engagement, poor academic performance and work/Family economic needs.
4. What about students’ life after dropping out?
Most of them choose to come back to an alternative school program because of economic and job reasons.
5. How to better take care of children after school?
During 3pm-6pm, most parents are on work and have no time to take care of their children, so after school programs play important role on supplying a place for kids to play and study.
6. Why is after school care required?
Under the supervision of engaged adults in safe and structured environments, high quality after school programs offer a variety of activities such as academic enrichment and support, homework help, career exploration, service learning, sports, fitness and wellness, arts and music, civic engagement and more.
7. Who take part in these after school programs?
There are lots of types of after school programs. Most of them are provided by public school, non-profit organizations, museums, social service agencies, community organizations, faith-based organizations and many other types of organizations.
8. What kinds of after school care options for single parent family?
There are 4 main options for single parent family.
a. Community-Based After School Programs
b. Swap Child Care Hours With Another Single Parent
c. Free After School Child Care Options
d. Hire an After School Babysitter
For our topic about after school programs, I think politicians and innovators. After searching some websites, we found most after school programs are provided by public school and non-profit organizations, and some are free. It means a lot of after school programs are sponsored by state governments and non-profit organizations. So politicians and innovators play an important part in setting up and keeping these programs.
It is only the first step for our team project, and we would summary our research results and conduct interviews, personas, modeling, and iterations later.
I still remember the sentence appearing on the last page of the first course content: “Life is a journey, not a destination.”, which encourages me to insist when I feel down in dumps.
Cite:
How children develop
3 Reasons Students Dropout of High School
by Ronald Chang, Stephen Cook, Liana Kong, Chris Taschner
Number 48 of Mayor Peduto’s 100 Policies, “Energy Benchmarking: Using Technology Technology To Make Our Buildings More Efficient”, reflects the need to reduce inefficient energy usage and negative environmental impact from carbon emissions. However, the limited impact that one individual building’s energy efficiency efforts has on both the environment and their bottom line is so insignificant that there is a general apathy among building administrators. It is only when every building reduces their energy usage will there be a significant economic and environmental effect. There are a few general approaches to the problem of energy usage:
Our team will tackle this issue from the second approach because of its relative ease. We will explore the use of multiple resources available to us at Carnegie Mellon University in dealing with energy usage. With the assistance from a CMU CyLab project, SensorAndrew, and faculty at CMU’s School of Architecture, we are looking to start down the path of developing a cost-effective solution that packages sensors, software to interpret sensor data, an intuitive dashboard, and information on potential energy savings together. Depending on what is willing to collaborate with us, we hope to test our solution on a government building that is less than 40,000 square feet because those usually do not have a team dedicated to reducing energy usage.
Current Efforts
Energy benchmarking is rapidly becoming a popular concept in cities and states around the country. At least 20 states and 16 cities have mandatory benchmarking requirements in place for certain types of buildings. This amount of demand has driven research and tool development in this area. Organizations such as the Green Building Alliance, a western Pennsylvania regional chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, have been pushing for more comprehensive action in this field for over twenty years. Efforts are currently being made by the Green Building Alliance and the mayor’s office to complete the 2030 Challenge, making Pittsburgh carbon neutral by 2030. The first step toward carbon neutrality is energy benchmarking. In addition to the research that has been done, commercial entities like Energy Star offer solutions for everything from private residences to stadiums. Once a building has been benchmarked, the next step the kit would take is to suggest possible solutions. Knowledge of the existing solutions inform those recommendation and provide additional value to the users.
Recent Momentum
Following the international push in climate change efforts signified by the United Nations meeting and subsequent march in New York, public awareness of energy efficiency and environmental efforts has returned. The lack of action in Congress has resulted in unilateral actions to reduce carbon emissions from local, state, and federal executive governments. For example, Pittsburgh city government is pushing for tracking and reducing energy usage, starting with a comprehensive audit of the City-County building downtown in 2010. The Department of Energy is also offering grants to local governments to reduce energy usage in existing buildings.
In the technological space, new low-cost sensor technology such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Image Processing Occupancy Sensor or CMU’s own SensorAndrew project makes tracking energy usage affordable and accessible. Advances in data analytics software, mobile phone applications, and visualization and modeling tools also makes efforts more affordable, facilitating widespread usage. While this may not lead directly to immediate returns, it is can at the very least generate good publicity and momentum towards change.
Value Proposition
Existing benchmarking tools focus on providing a snapshot of a buildings energy usage. These tools require large amounts of data to be input for the score to be calculated. The approach that we are proposing would provide a more automated solution. By providing a portable benchmarking kit that includes sensors that can capture the pertinent data we are reducing worker hours requirements. In addition, the kit can be shared among a number of buildings, providing a solution for the city that is more economical than having to install a system for each building to be benchmarked. Our intended impact is to streamline the process, leverage technological development, and to make connections in energy savings among market players that do not yet exist. We will measure the impact made by measuring the resulting reduction of energy usage and cost different from our proposed solution to current solutions.
Timeline
September
October
November
Social Impact Matrix
By Robyn Lambert
Entering this class I was unsure about humanitarian design. In a lot of design communities, humanitarian design is focused on the mind set of “design for the other 99%”. It tends to be centered in product design solutions, and not addressing issues that can be found on a local level. I personally don’t connect well with this definition of humanitarian focused design, as it at times seems the opposite of innovative. I have often been frustrated by the fact that many designers try to find solutions in communities half way around the world, while there are so many relevant and pressing issues found close to home. I find that many of us think that problems we are distant from are much easier to solve than those that we are the most familiar with.
I decided to be in this class because of the buzzwords “design” and “policy”. I feel that it is rare these two words are put together. Surprisingly, I don’t think many young designers think about policy, or many young policy makers think of design. I connect deeply with the idea of design and policy going hand in hand. I have always connected with the idea of policy and try to stay as politically informed as the average college student can be. But honestly, I decided to take the class from following intuition. At times, I feel as if the trajectory of Carnegie Mellon, and in some cases the design program, is to work at a major tech firm. There is a feeling in certain circles on campus that you have not succeeded if you are not working for Facebook, Google, or Apple. I decided to take this class because after a summer of working at a small socially conscious design firm. I found myself questioning the goals and motivation of many students, including myself. I thought engaging in this class, engaging in the community, and looking at design from a new perspective. Would help ground me as a designer, so that I can start to consider or find a path that I would feel more proud to follow.
The group I am working in is Team 2, which is addressing the problem of blight in Pittsburgh, and looking at a community conscious solution. Our group landed on this problem as we all connected to blight in someway. I connected to the topic of blight, from the standpoint of considering how do you revitalize a community while preventing the problems that come from gentrification. I come from Portland Oregon. I grew up there, and as I grew up, so did the city. The city is starting to feel major impacts of gentrification. Portland is known for its cool hip appeal but, in fact it has pushed out entire traditional communities of color. The city is in the process of gentrification, and I have watched this entire transformation occur. I am drawn to blight because it is the step before gentrification. How can fighting blight, help safeguard a community so it grows, but its growth benefits the entire community not just the major shareholders.
Before this class, I had already known the term “wicked problem”. As it turns out, my group is trying to solve a wicked problem now. We are looking at blight in Pittsburgh. Twenty of properties in the city could be categorized as blighted. The root of the problem is connected to why properties fall into disrepair. This problem is deep rooted in Pittsburgh’s history and is connected to issues found on a systematic level. In looking at blight it seems so large that it will be difficult to tackle in just three months alone. This has gotten me considering what are the best ways to address a problem that seems so immensely large. I sometimes wonder that when we are looking and talking about this problem that sometimes we are considering too much. I think that this may be holding us back in our design process. I think that there may be a point in which too much analyzing will occur. I think it is time to start creating (at least that is what I need). I think we are in a great place, we just have to make the first scary step of starting to make together.
Identifying the Challenge
We are interested in exploring systems that can help re-engage blighted properties as opportunities for adding value to the communities in which they are located. Mayor Bill Peduto’s ‘Policies to Change Pittsburgh’ recognizes that nearly 20 percent of properties in Pittsburgh are vacant or abandoned. Concentrated in different neighborhoods around the city, blighted property cause a drain on municipal services and reduce the value of properties around and has other devastating effects to the community like increased crime, lack of business development, and the destruction of key neighborhood relationships like trust, self-image, and community.
For this project we are looking at activities which can quickly and easily be implemented, but can potentially have long term social impact. The communities themselves are central to our design ideas and goals: the initiatives we would like better supported are a more successful community engagement in the design process of urban space, an easy access to vacant lots by community leaders, which have not been initiated in the formal process of acquisition/development, and for the community to transform blighted property so that they become useful parts of the community.
Vacancy County in Pittsburgh – PDF
Lessons to be Learned
While the legislation for the Pittsburgh Community Land Bank aims to address policy issues related to the management of blighted property in the city, we hope to learn how to engender mutual trust within a community through the collective design and use of a physical space, what residents of a neighborhood value and how they perceive blighted properties and their potential, and how to design and envision tools for access to members of the community. As a result of our work, we hope that owners of blighted properties will be more engaged in their properties on behalf of the communities in which they exist, and that residents will be more actively engaged and self-determining in how blighted properties exist within their communities.
Economic, Political and Cultural Approaches
There are a number of entities in existence that deal with the issue of blight. They include The Pittsburgh Land Bank, the URA, land trusts, community development corporations, and GTECH. From our initial review of the work that these organizations are doing, the focus, or guiding principle, seems to be investment towards capital and/or social value that increase the sustainability for entire communities and their community members. We are interested in a design-based solution to blight that is centered on creating social investment towards an increase in the social value for communities.
GTECH has been a great catalyst for addressing the issue of blight in the city of Pittsburgh. They have realized both on the ground work, collaborating with CDCs, and systematically by creating a Neighborhood Ambassador program that creates point people within communities that directly address blighted lots that have been a problem within their community. Moreover, they have collaborated with the county,City and URA on expediting the acquisition process of vacant lots and are now advocating for the Land Bank legislation, which will make the acquisition process easier and systematic. Finally, they have worked with foundations, design consultants and the community itself to advance the design and development of sustainability initiatives in vacant lots after their acquisition.
On the higher systems level, they are working in collaboration with the Pittsburgh Greenspace Alliance, to create a “Vacant Lot Toolkit” which will help streamline the legal process of acquisition and development. This tool will assist significantly in dispersing the knowledge around the legal issues of vacant lots and ultimately educate communities on how to start on their own projects by taking over vacant land affecting them.
We identified that currently there is a significant amount of work that is being realized in the city relating blighted and vacant lots that could enhance the social and economic situations of some neighborhoods. In fact, most of this work is focused on vacant lots without any buildings. As identified by GTECH:
“Vacant Lot – a parcel of land completely void of any structures. These parcels result from absentee landlords and tax lien accumulation. These lots are either unkempt or maintained by municipal authorities.”
But what about blighted land that includes old infrastructure and vacant buildings? There are very few incentives for repurposing old abandoned building structures through policy or any other social initiatives. Much more than their vacant lot counterparts, blighted structures can attract more criminal activity and deteriorate to the point that they impose serious health and safety issues for the community. We believe there is space for us to work in the realm of repurposing vacant buildings in the short term through community-based design initiatives so that they can become a beneficial part of the community in the long run. These existing approaches for repurposing vacant lots in The City can greatly inform our efforts and can provide us with important information about the possible pitfalls, opportunities and short-term success on the way. While our focus becomes the redevelopment of vacant buildings in neighborhood, we can also use them in a way that could empower communities and create stronger connections between community members and the issues that matter to them.
In other words, policy from the level of expedited land acquisition processes and systematic thinking is as needed as community empowerment by means of the urban space in which they inhabit. We are currently trying to evaluate both approaches and find a middle ground. GTECH is working on making a ‘Vacant Lot Tool Kit’ and reworking the vacant lot literature from a systemic level. On the ground, we are evaluating and visiting the neighborhood of Wilkinsburg as a base for community data collection and place-based policy understandings. Looking at the local approaches that have been practiced in that neighborhood can give us great insight not only into how communities can be built around vacant lots and blighted property development but also as to how these can be integral parts of community development.
Design, Policy and Market Context
We believe that blight and vacancy is a reinforcing event that affects low income neighborhoods negatively. More vacancy creates more distress, and more distress leads to people moving out, hence increasing vacancy. However, instead of addressing the issue as a problem, we are hoping to reveal both to the city and the respective neighborhoods the inherent opportunity for community development that lies in vacant structures. While the Land Bank Legislation just enacted might take a while to take into effect and the current lengthy legal process for land acquisition and remediation discourage communities from ever realizing project, we have tried to think of how can citizens claim problematic blighted property in their neighborhoods and turn them into useful solutions.
We have identified certain policies and design practices in place that can become useful tools for our project design; some of them being less implemented than others. Firstly, Pennsylvania’s Law of Conservatorship, which was enacted in 2008, is now being more actively pursued in Pittsburgh since Spring 2013. Under this Law, “Blighted and Abandoned Property Conservatorship” gives the opportunity for local organizations, municipalities and citizens to deal directly with blighted properties that have been an issue in the community for a long time and that the owners do not care to take responsibility for. Under this act, a solicitor can ask from a judge to appoint a responsible person or party (conservator) to take care of an abandoned property, stabilize and rehabilitate it, in the case that the actual owner is not willing or able to deal with it.² This Act is fairly new and it could be worth examining how it can be used in a meaningful way for creating added value for the community through the conservatoship of unclaimed, blighted structures. Working with the assumption that all acquisition or demolition for new use processes are quite lengthy and time demanding, we think that this act might be able to significantly shorten the period of time within which the communities can get access to some of those properties.
Other programs and practices that are currently happening in Pittsburgh and should be of consideration to our group are the URA’s Facade Improvement Programs as well as the Pop-Up businesses movement that creates short-term placemaking opportunities.The Pittsburgh Land Bank, enacted in April of this year, will completely change the legal processes on dealing with blight and vacant. Even if the program is not in place yet and will need significant amount of time to stabilize, we need to keep in mind how it will affect our proposed system in the future.
Finally, by aiming to use abandoned buildings as a way to benefit the community in place and create stronger social structures based on mutual trust within a neighborhood, we believe that it is critical to consider issues of ownership. Towards this direction it might be helpful to better understand the Land Trust and other Cooperative legal structures that work around issues of blight, vacant property, and community interests.
Tracking Success
If we are to truly approach this issue using a methodology that combines policy and design practices, we also must realize that our project does not have a clear end-date. Certainly, we are working with a timeline set by the academic calendar. At the end of the semester, grades are due, and we will no longer share time and space within the walls of our classroom. However, these realities do not mean that “impact” can be measured neatly at this time or that the success of our efforts will be easily readable as classifiable results. We are attempting to do something innovative with this project, and innovation always involves an experimental element. Yet, this is not a scientific experiment. Our project is a deeply human undertaking, and, as such, we might not be able to determine the success or failure of our efforts on such a short term basis.
Based on the plan we have so far for engaging a local community in our project, their desire to take it up and make it their own will be the measure of our success. We are hoping to design a model for short-term use of a blighted or vacant buildings space that can actually influence the future of blighted or vacant spaces throughout that community on a long-term scale. Since policy and law move quite slowly when it comes to dealing with blighted properties and doing something of value with them–this is part of the problem–it might be some time before we actually know the future of the space we have invested in, let alone similar, surrounding spaces. A large part of our goal is to help local communities have an increased level of control and agency in deciding how vacant space is developed in their communities. If we have succeeded, we will begin to see those community members have an impact as well, on their own terms.
Therefore, our process must involve constant iteration. We will need to look again and again at what we are doing, evaluating the level of positive community response our actions are having in that moment, and then projecting those actions two to three years down the line. What will our present model look like then? If we are unsure that our present actions will lead to the future goal, we will need to adjust that model and test it again, always with an eye toward future impact.
To help us in making such evaluations concrete and tangible, we will be using some of the methods included in Lucy Kimbell and Joe Julier’s “Toolkit,” The Social Design Methods Menu: In perpetual beta, particularly the “Outcome Matrix” and the Blueprint.”
Project Timeline
At this stage in the design process, the project timeline remains abstract and speculative as we try to find specific topics to focus on, the appropriate stake holders, and the actual details of our design solution. Nonetheless we can interpret the timeline for the project superimposed to that of the class and create a time framework for how to proceed forward with the project for the rest of the semester. Early in the project development our team members got together in order to identify and research the relevant components of how the Land Bank legislation worked, how blighted infrastructures have affected Pittsburgh communities and what possible sets of solution could be drafted given our particular set of goals of community driven development, increase of social value, and a useful redevelopment process for a community to acquiring land for make short term urban solutions. This stage is represented by the black area in the Timeline. Moving to red, the place on the timeline in which this brief was drafted on, we have met with relevant professionals that have worked on this field and that gave us great insight into how these systems work and what is currently being done to address them. This process has allowed us to obtain several leads where we can start to place ourselves in a social and economic context to the issue of blight in The City.
Now, as we are getting ready to identify specific communities and start drafting relevant design solutions we move toward the yellow. Here, the interactions within our team in terms of building meetings and environments that conduce easy flow of creative design solutions are important as well as creating meaningful, holistic, and concrete design solutions to our topic of blighted structures and neighborhood empowerment. It is in this area where our timelines moves into drafting specific solutions, proposing concrete projects, and thinking about how to implement them both to further our team goals and advance our project ideas. The are is big because in this space we are bouncing on ideas, developing other, and finding what solutions work. The space between design and development, then, represent a place where we would have to assess our solution, analyze the relevant policy and economic implications and understand how community relationship will be affected. At the ‘Implementation’ phase most of the effort is on developing the project itself and gaining valuable insight that can help us reiterate, modify, and reassess.
In the end, when we approach blue, we have made sure that our final submission doesn’t only accommodates the original goals of the group as a whole, but can also be regarded as a relevant attempt for a design solution to the issue of blight on communities around Pittsburgh, as well as a way that community members can start to engage with the urban environment in a different way.
Resources:
1.GTECH 2006, Vacant to Vibrant: A guide for revitalizing vacant lots in your neighborhood <https://gtechstrategies.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/VacanttoVibrant.pdf>
2. Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania, Conservatorship Handbook, How to use Conservatorship to Address Blighted and Abandoned Property for Allegheny County Community Leaders, Spring 2013.<www.housingalliancepa.org/sites/default/files/resources/ConservatorshipManual_Pgh_AllegCo-final.pdf>
3. Kimbell, Lucy and Joe Julier. The Social Design Methods Menu: In perpetual beta. <http://www.lucykimbell.com/stuff/Fieldstudio_SocialDesignMethodsMenu.pdf>
– Team 2
After reading Peduto’s 100 policies, it definitely seemed like some were more fleshed out than others, in an effort to hit the 100 number. Our team chose one of the less clear ones, in an effort to have a bit more room to work with in the space, as there is really no simple solution offered. My group’s policy deals with energy benchmarking, with nods to the reduction of energy being a good thing since it will increase property prices. The writeup deals little with the environmental impact, but rather tries to incentivize green buildings in that manner. Only once does it mention tax credits, which seems to be an obvious route, and only in reference to success in other cities. I’m more of a hands on person, with an interest in creating items that could be used to effect policy or as means to enact policy. Exploring this particular policy seemed like a good chance to have an ability to make things, and thus my team came up with the idea of a DIY audit kit through our research and speaking with Anthony Rowe, an assistant research professor at CMU who works with the SensorAndrew project.
My attitude towards design has definitely shifted since the beginning of the course. As someone who has been working in industry the past 10 years, creating tangible products, I’m a bit surprised of the design ethos here at CMU. There seems to be less focus on the physical deliverables, and more emphasis on design thinking through all aspects of the process. I’m definitely more inclined to just get started working and figuring things out along the way, as opposed to thinking about a social impact matrix and the like. Ultimately, I’ve found a bit more thought beforehand can only help, though I do find the ambiguity a bit frustrating.
This directly affected the process of my group’s exploration of our potential project. Without the structure I’m accustomed to, usually in the form of a client’s specs/wants/needs, it was a bit tough to figure out what we should actually do. I found it helpful meeting with Anthony Rowe and learning a bit more about the topic of energy benchmarking, from someone who has been working in the space for over 10 years. It definitely helped to define our scope by understanding a bit more about his frustrations in the area and getting a few suggestions as to routes to take. Key things he mentioned were in regards to the little incentive available to change due to cheap energy prices, the benefits for large buildings to switch over to green systems, and where the green industries currently are operating.
A key factor I worry about within this realm is the lack of concrete results to compel anyone to make changes. While many might agree that we need to be aware of environmental issues and decrease our impact, it’s tough to actually act. If you say to someone they saved $18 on their monthly energy bill, they have quantifiable results to look at. This isn’t quite as possible when it comes to environmental factors, and thus the impetus is not there to change your habits. I’m interested in the areas where we can try and quantify environmental impact, as a means to promote social change.
Ultimately, energy benchmarking within buildings seems to be primarily a policy issue considering the lack on incentive on an individual basis. Policy change through energy reduction requirements and tax credits at first look seems to be the most likely things to impact change. Even with these policy changes though, there needs to be clear and easy paths for the property owners to enact the change, or else the policy will get continuously rolled back similar to current healthcare requirements. Creating that easy path is where my team and I felt we could make the most impact, via a DIY energy audit kit.
– Stephen Cook
by Eleni Katrini [team 02]
It is funny how the path towards figuring out “what you want to do in life” follows an elliptical pattern moving you slowly towards a certain direction, but always leads you to revisit ideas and concepts you are passionate about. And every visit looks through a new perspective because you have grown slightly each spiral on the way.
Back in my architecture studies, I was never attracted by the starchitecture image; I felt more drawn towards environmentally conscious design that intends to bring people closer and create strong social relationships and networks. I was always intrigued by the idea that cities bring us so close together, but often enough they lead to alienation. And if that is so how is it possible to change that through design? Ten years and a lot of spirals later, I still find myself wondering the same things, but through a completely different lens and I hope with a better understanding.
There were two main reasons that I selected to attend this course. I have always placed myself in the design realm and only three years ago, I started combining design with deeper research and not just analysis of facts. This opened a whole new world for me. How you can make solid decisions, based on patterns, trends and data. I hope this class will help me better understand and use policy in order to create innovate design solutions that at the end of day are feasible and get on the ground. As mentioned in class, often enough designers can have great ideas that do not get implemented, because they couldn’t understand the trends and the policies in place that would help their projects take off. I am hoping to understand how policy can catalyze good design ideas and understand what are the critical social shifts to happen for people to embrace a less resourceful and more socially engaging lifestyle.
Moreover, it was an opportunity to get out of the enclosed world of architecture and work with people from different backgrounds, that have followed their own spiral to reach at a similar spot as I have. I was lucky enough to find a group for this course that is interested in the same topics; urban revitalization, dealing with shrinking cities and vacancy, addressing issues of gentrification and creating strong social networks in the physical space through community engagement. As I am currently doing my PhD in a department where I have very few interests in common with the people around me, I felt excited during our team discussions, some of which seemed that they could go on forever.
The second reason why I decided to join this class was to work on a real life project that I am really interested in, with the liberty of experimentation that the university provides. Having worked with communities in Pittsburgh for the last two years, I have been exposed fairly to some of the city’s stories and got to know a lot of exciting people who are driving the city’s revitalization via bottom up practices. However working with tight funds and a 9 to 5 schedule can limit experimentation. I hope that through this project our team will have the space and time to explore different ways of design processes and that will hopefully lead us to innovative solutions. Moreover, I am hoping that we can get hands on experience on the project. I have analyzed, written reports, made recommendations and done research but all this in a very academic and theoretical sphere. I have never managed to propose something and actually see it happen, even if it fails. Looking at Mitchell’s work, I found wondering myself why is it that in all the projects I have been working on, I have not managed to be more engaged in the implementation side. So I hope that our process will lead us there and we can actually engage people and have fun with it.
Up to this moment we have been bouncing ideas off one another and we have talked to different stakeholders that know well the field we want to work on, that of blight and community engagement in Pittsburgh. We met with Christine Mondor from EvolveEA and with Evaine K. Sing from GTECH. Both conversations were immensely helpful in outlining the work currently being done in the city. We hope that we have now somewhat placed ourselves within the system of blight, and that we will have the opportunity to address issues of community collaboration, mutual trust, exchange economies and placemaking. We have been talking a lot about stabilizing and reusing abandoned structures within a neighborhood in a way that benefits the community itself and creates value for its people that cannot be necessary capitalized. What I would be interested to see is how those properties can become “pop-up” shared services for the community, that can be run by members of the community itself. The pop-up service may stay as long as the community wants and they might change over time to serve their needs. Some services for example can be a daycare, where people are taking care of each other’s children, a bike shop, a conservancy/grocery store, an events space etc. (1) The great thing about that is not only that they are going to bring the community together and offer services to each other that they did not have access to, but they also shift the perception of the physical space and give place making opportunities.
1. Francois Jegou, Ezio Manzini, Collaborative Services, Social Innovation and Design for Sustainability [link]
Where we are now:
Our group has a clear area of interest but we haven’t arrived yet on specific social innovation idea. We want to empower women, especially single mothers, with healthier food options and increase awareness among youth about making healthy food choices. Our plan is to collaborate with a Pittsburgh non-profit currently addressing these issues and either develop a technology that increases/improves its capacity or can be directly used by local residents/target group. We believe we’ll have greater impact if we leverage the insight and resource infrastructure of an organization that is already at work on-the-ground.
It’s exciting and daunting/intimidating to be immersed in Pittsburgh’s vibrant, evolving food space. This project has been a great opportunity to learn about Pittsburgh’s food system and social innovation aimed at improving fresh food access. From our research, I hope to learn more about how the local food system is interconnected with local transportation, land use/urban planning, economic development, and food/nutrition policies. I also hope to gain an intimate understanding of how connecting people through fresh, nutritious food can foster community and economic growth.
Our Process
Our team started by discussing what our design and policy interests were and what social causes/problems we felt passionate about. We then highlighted where there was overlap/commonality among team members. Then we ideated around the particular social problems that would allow us to apply the design and policy interests.
We also set out to research neighborhoods and narrow down prospective ones for our project: Our interest in these neighborhoods was based on their demography, perceived social issues, the development/revitalization currently happening in the area, and opportunity to partner with innovative community organizations/non-profits.
In our team meeting, we laid out all of all our research by dividing them into categories:
We then listed out solution areas that interested us: some initial thoughts include:
Challenges
It’s easy for me to get off-focus during research and feel scattered/like I’ve lost sight of the project purpose. The topic we are tackling is multi-faceted and I have trouble organizing my thoughts at times. Answering the thought-starter questions helped with this. I also think we need a clear research/project framework with specific indicators/measurements of success at each stage. However, it’s difficult to come up with these as we go back and forth between what we want our goals/outcomes to be, the problem we identify/want to solve, and the different alternatives/strategies that are feasible.
What stuck out in our Research
I was impressed by Pam Warhurst’s Incredible Edible, Eve Pickering’s vision for Pittsburgh. I’m interested in the work that the Food Trust is doing in empowering corner stores to provide fresh produce. I also feel inspired by Garfield’s master plan or vision by 2030. I’m particularly interested in finding out how we can improve the community—create more beautiful spaces, places for public use that are pedestrian friendly and stimulate equitable economic/commercial development through increased access to and awareness of healthy, fresh food.
I’m drawn to the rhetoric related to community ownership or democratization of food. Good Eggs and Food Revolution Pittsburgh imbue this in their messaging—this idea that people need to take back control of their food options—that food insecurity is tied to the community/individuals gradually losing ownership over what goes in their diets. We have discussed how to craft a communications message about healthy eating/food access related to our social innovation. It will be worth studying and talking to these organizations about the meaning and purpose behind their strategic communications.
Next Steps
Right now our group will focus on mapping out the stakeholders and also continue reaching out to relevant non-profit organizations. We will learn about the objectives and programs of these organizations and see if there is an opportunity to help increase the capacity or improve the quality of service these organizations provide through a technological innovation. I’m looking forward to all the people we will meet in the food community and hearing their perspectives on community food needs and strategies to address them.
What is interesting, but unsurprising, about Peduto’s 100 policies is that there is something in there for everyone. After sifting through all 100, the entire class came into agreement around one fact: there were too many initiatives! Many of the policies overlapped and some could easily be folded into others for a more focused and less overwhelming campaign. However, to my original point, Peduto’s 100 policies succeeds in creating a dialogue for a change, and that is because there is at least one policy that resonates with every reader.
Peduto’s policy #80, Bank On: Building Stronger Communities through Financial Security, focuses on financial literacy, savings, and economic empowerment, areas that the individuals in my group feel strongly about and have touched upon in their earlier work experiences. We came together eager to work on an approach that would combat the endemic cycle of poverty and attempt to break it.
So, as a group, we surveyed existing financial literacy programs and identified a need for a central managing body, which was the same conclusion Peduto arrived at. As it is, there are some community-based organizations out there, who address this issue for different niche groups, but they leave the needs of families and individuals outside of those groups unaddressed. In policy #29, Financial Empowerment Centers: Helping to Build Self-Sufficiency and Financial Literacy, Peduto spoke of creating “Financial Empowerment Centers in their neighborhoods” to “pull these resources under one roof.” It makes sense to have a consolidated center that can be accessed by all interested parties. This center, reachable in person and by phone, would be available to connect willing users to a financial expert/social worker at a satellite location in their neighborhood. These satellite locations would be accessible at times during and outside of work hours, and they would cater to the most common financial needs of that community. We were overall pleased that our model agreed with Peduto’s, despite slight disappointment among a couple of us about the similarity on the surface level.
As noted in lecture, we realized the importance of paying close attention to existing systems to identify process stopgaps and needs, not only with regards to finding a point of entry for innovation, but to acknowledge what was already working, and why. We are completely uninterested in reinventing the wheel. Ideally, we would be able to drawn upon the strengths of existing financial programs and reuse and recycle a couple of these insights (one definition of innovation). So, at this moment, we are looking at process needs as our ‘source of innovation’ and adaptation and enhancement as our method.
Adapting insights from successful programs is certainly one way Peduto has gone himself. #80, Bank on, was inspired by a program of the National League of Cities, brought to Pittsburgh by the Urban League of Pittsburgh. #28, Save PGH: Creating a Culture of Financial Literacy and Responsibility, was inspired by SaveUSA, a program initiated by NYC officials to promote the habit of saving through a matching system.
Our focus for the semester, then is some combination of #28, #29, and #80. We’re relying on Peduto’s current focus on the area to mean that the timing is right. This has been a recurring theme in Design & Policy for Humanitarian Change, and a central one. Every good idea, every good solution, has to wait for its moment in time. Planners, innovators have to be graced with luck from above that their ideas come at just the right time in order to succeed. The factor of timing is one thing my team kept returning to when deciding what project to pursue, and how to best explore breaking the cycle of poverty.
Good timing means available funding, in addition to attention. United Impact Fund is supplying funding to Bank on Greater Pittsburgh as one in a long list of participating community partners. As part of the program, banks in several neighborhoods have dropped the fees associated with opening basic checking and savings accounts. There is already momentum behind this initiative.
We also have some luck with timing in a complementary area: neighborhood development. Mayor Peduto created two community-based programs, Office of Community Affairs and Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment, that would strengthen the ethnographic research behind our suggested Bank on program well. They may also provide support for it, by hosting events or spreading the word of mouth.
The Community Affairs team has visited dozens of neighborhoods already, responding to constituent needs. This would be helpful information for us to know. The Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment focuses on non-profit and faith-based initiatives, mixed-income housing, small business and workforce development, and high-quality education. The non-profit and faith-based and small business initiatives align with the goals of our program, too, and they may already be addressing financial-based issues. A mutually-beneficial, symbiotic relationship seems natural – financial empowerment would also benefit the economic development of these neighborhoods, and our goals seem to align with theirs.
Lastly, and most broadly, another fortuitous facet about the timing is Peduto’s whole culture of change. As reflected in the decision to pursue a partnership with the Brookings Institution, Peduto has committed himself to making Pittsburgh “a model of innovative and equitable development.” We see ourselves as part of that model.
We have a number of conversations in front of us with leaders and volunteers at community centers, faith-based initiatives, and non-profits; Kevin Acklin, Peduto’s Chief of Staff; Esther Bush, CEO of the Urban League; Howard Slaughter Jr, chairman of Bank on; Manager Grant Gittlen and Deputy Manager Lex Janes of The Community Affairs Team; and Dr. Curtiss Porter and Valerie McDonald Roberts, from the Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment.
Through these conversations, we’d like to test the idea behind our system of a central body, satellite offices in neighborhood centers, and financial meetups in the same centers. These meetups are here to signify investment in the community, to provide a face to a name, to develop relationships and trust with participants, and to build a community of individuals who share the same mutual goal of moving forward financially. The meetups are here to take the scary, impersonal part of going directly to a bank for help away.
We’ll keep you informed of our progress!
– Jennifer, Team 5
“ Design and Policy” is the word that anchored me to this course. I was always inclined to exploring creativity inside me but along with that I wanted to pursue my passion “ to impact human life”.
A few years ago, I was working for a not for profit which tasked me with a challenging task of capturing people’s perception on a sanitation problem. In specific the problem was on solid waste management and I had the opportunity to study the stakeholder and they systems. It was a journey that made me realize how human systems and the enablers in form of technology, resources, governance and power interact to provide services. While it was insightful to see how people from different background look at the problem it was also important discovery that I had that people needed a platform that motivates them to do something about a problem. Then we decided to come up with a visual model, which we decided to use as a communication platform for people to interact. It was a creative approach that was being applied.
As we started off the class understanding the definitions of innovation, creativity, markets and intuitions to think out of the box we knew something more exciting was up for us. I had 3 key learning, which evolved while working with the team, which I will be jotting down below:
First learning happened!
It began with team building exercise, where we were put out of comfort zone and asked to pick topic and teams. Initially it was a stuck moment but gradually by the end of the class unconsciously things were happening. For the first time it felt good to be “unstructured” and make a team and topic happen.
Second learning-Eureka!
We had to finalize a project idea from Peduto’s100 Days; 100 Policies to Change Pittsburgh and it was a week away. We were handed with big sheets and sticky notes. One of our team mate, brought the Peduto’s ideas as print out sheets and then we started the process. First we went about re-reading the definition of problems and what the Mayor expectations were. We started picking key words from these descriptions and started throwing them on a white board. Then we saw a theme that was generated through the strings of these key words and then we decided to connect them cutting across three areas Immigration , Historic Preservation and Culture . We also ended up coming with the problem definition in each areas and saw the intersection where each area could feed into other to generate a solution. The picture on the right shows the picture of how we walked through that journey.
Third learning!
I read the article By Sabine on design and policy where she talked about how design is not considered at the beginning of the policy making stage and only brought into focus when policy implementation phase appears. The author emphasized that design was required to be associated from the time issue was identified in the policy making space and asked the readers to think creatively on tools of design.
We intend to add to that journey and come up with a tool box at the least by the end of our project to inform people on how design thinking be brought to impact humans. One of the design student from our team offered an interesting tool called “ stakeholder value mapping”. This map will try and capture value created all the stakeholders at each phase of the project.
We as our next phase intend to meet people from Global Pittsburgh, Vibrant Pittsburgh and PHLF who have done enormous body of work around cultural diversity and historic preservation areas. We hope to learn more from the people from these organizations.
Recently the talk by Mitchel on creating humanitarian space provided another window to look at problem uniquely. He is a perfect example who started with design and is moving towards the zone of influencing policy and people.
Today after 2 month down in the course I have broaden my thinking and learnt how to apply thinking and tools from different disciplines in solving problems that impact people and their lives. I will be delighted and motivated to see how our journey turns out in next few months.
-Sumiya Tarannum
When I was applying for Master’s programs in Human-Computer Interaction, I wrote in my personal statement: “I’m tired of just analyzing things, I want to make things: things that will make people’s lives better.” That was the impetus for joining this Design and Policy class as well as gaining some new perspectives on problem solving in the real world from designers and Heinzers. The class also came highly recommended by last years MHCIers!
I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the great list of guest lectures that we would have in the class and that the focus of our semester-long project would be on local, Pittsburgh issues. Next spring and fall, I will be studying in Madeira, Portugal at the Madeira Institute of Interactive Technologies. Therefore, I really wanted to spend time this semester on exploring Pittsburgh and utilizing all the resources available here at CMU that might not exist abroad. In my opinion, Pittsburgh is a wonderful city that is completely underrated in other parts of the country (i.e. my home state of California!).
Of course, no place is perfect, as Mayor Peduto’s 100 desired policy changes reflect. Having worked for the federal government for the past few years, I quickly bypassed any projects regarding government efficiency. My first instinct is always to look for women’s issues because that’s what I’m passionate about, but there were surprisingly few on the list (none?). One of the policies that really caught my eye at the beginning of the semester was about bringing ferries or a more extensive water taxi system to Pittsburgh. While we were in the midst of finding groups for the Impact Lab, I found some students discussing financial literacy issues who also expressed interest in the ferry idea. We formed a group and proceeded with both projects in mind. It took one of our professors, Tim Zak, to ask, “What does success look like?” to narrow our focus and finally decide on working to create an environment of financial responsibility within Pittsburgh.
I’m excited about this area and exploring the many spaces between community, non-profits, technological applications, and communication design. We have a group of go-getters that has already yielded some fruitful research and ideas in the form of sketching and even role-playing what someone who wanted to use these financial services might say or do. I did hit one mental roadblock after discovering the initiative Bank On Greater Pittsburgh because our initial concept was to create something just like that! My gut reaction was a selfish one of disappointment in that this group was already getting started with the support of the Mayor’s office. What more could we do? But upon reflection, the answer is obviously a lot! Our next steps will be to work with the Mayor’s office and Bank On to figure out exactly where they need help and how design, policy, and technology can play a role.
It’s a great feeling to be working with a group of people I simply find interesting. A lot of team bonding comes when you just talk about your lives. I hope to learn more from them about the policy pieces and how to communicate with communities as an outsider. Together, we will “follow the money” towards an innovative solution.
-Katie, Team 5
My father is PhD in Public Administration and my mother is the chairman of District Women’s Federation. Both of them have undertaken the work of community service for many years. In my eyes, my parents’ undiminished responsibility has warmed the society and thus, made them my role model.
I labelled myself as ‘good citizen’ all my life and I am always proud of that. Social responsibility is a big concept, but under my parents’ influence, this word is rooted in my heart and actually affect my behaviors. All the time, I follow the DO’s and DON’Ts I have learnt in kindergarten.
When I grew up, I started doing volunteer works. Partly it is because I think this is the right thing to do, and partly because a sense of pity results from my superiority since I was born in such a blessed family without worries for basic living and had chances of trying a lot of different things.
As my experience and knowledge grew, I begin to examine the deep reason of what makes the difference between beneficiaries and benefactors, the people who needs help and the people who has the capacity to help.
Completely opposite experiences happened during my study as an exchange student in US and a volunteer in a slum in Delhi, India and they brought me deeper doubts. At first, I thought that Delhi, as the capital, should at least have the basic and standard living conditions. But I was proved wrong: old people suffered from hunger and they have to do all the hard works to survive, the kids’ eagerness for education could not be satisfied, I learnt news about broken families being afflicted with illness and death, while as in U.S, people are living and working in peace and contentment under a well-established social security system without water or electricity being cut off and without the torture of diseases.
The distribution of resources is extremely unbalanced. This happened not only amongst different people and amongst different areas in the same country, it happen across the nations. If we say the uneven distributed resource is the reason to distinguish beneficiaries and benefactor, then who, or what causes such situation which cannot be solved over hundreds of years? And who, and in what method, can do something about it?
Once I was invited by one of my Indian student to her birthday party. When I arrived, I got to know that everyone in the party would help this girl plant a tree as I mentioned in my recent lecture about global warming. (picture above) At that moment, I was deeply moved by realizing what I did as a volunteer was taking effect. But at the same time I also realized that the influence a volunteer could make was limited.
Then I turned my attention to policy area and started my master degree in public policy. The more I learnt, the more I realize the importance of this problem and the difficulty of solving it. And the reality is, policy is not panacea. Sadly, sometimes policy is even poison. Social conflicts resulting from uneven distribution of resources become more intensive gradually. We cannot afford spending year after year launching reports saying “we must do something”, “this problem has to get everyone’s attention” while there is no one really coming up with an effective way of gradual improvement.
Of course, such a complex social issue cannot be solved overnight. It is related to all aspects: economic, technology, culture, education, etc. But is there any other things we can do to try to speed up this process or think of a better way to deal with it? Instead of gradual improvement, what about radical innovation?
In this sense, I am so happy that I selected this courses. I have never noticed that social innovation can be a possible way and that it can even be a subject. As we mentioned in the class repeatedly, “social innovation is something hard to be defined, but once you see it, you will notice.” Well, this class actually brought social innovation as a concept to my notice.
I believe that the real social innovation has no standardized procedures. Its magic depends on its ‘uncertainty’. As one the reading suggests, social innovation is a rare event. It involves interactions, amounting various parties over a relatively long period of time. It requires extraordinary leadership, careful analysis, causes and needs, appropriate context, supportive factors and a feasible implementation plan. However, even if you collect all the above elements, there is still no guarantee of the success of social innovation. So why people are so obsessed about social innovation?
I guess that is because it has the power to change. And this is because I believe the core of social innovation is think differently. Think outside of the box – that is one really important idea that I learnt in the class. And I guess that is why we need to group with people from different fields. Our differences in our backgrounds and in the way of thinking struck some sparks. And I guess that was how Benjamin Franklin began his great adventure in creating such impressive and influential innovation.
In our group project, I believe that all three of us are enjoying the process of discussion, and for sure they, as realists and data analysts, complement me as idealists who belongs to ‘action before thinking’ group. They let me understand what “Don’t take things for granted” means in the aspect of social innovation. Now I begin to learn how to analyze data which I barely did before. I don’t know what we will come up at the end, but it will be great, I promise.
To conclude this paper, I will like to bring up my favorite article I read so far in this course – ‘Rediscovering Social Innovation’. This articles brings up a really interesting concept that social innovation is most likely to happen in the intersection of business, nonprofit, and government sectors. I was really excited when I read about this article, one because I fully agreed with its title, second because I wrote exactly same idea in my undergrad university graduation thesis, talking about the merging of profit and nonprofit sector’s operations will generate big changes. Well, what can I say, great minds think alike!
Why do some people save money and others don’t? My team is trying to address that question through our project with Save PGH, number 28 on Mayor Peduto’s list of 100 policies to change Pittsburgh. Looking at that list brought to mind a favorite Eleanor Roosevelt quote that says, “You must do the thing you think you cannot do”.
http://personalexcellence.co/quotes/3184
Now, I am not taking on a problem that is quite as menacing as what Eleanor faced in her life, but I think her sentiment is valid. When I think about innovation, it can be scary. The task can seem so large that I feel I cannot do it. Financial decisions are complex, even personal, and often come with a heritage of discriminatory practices. That interconnectedness of this problem can seem pretty daunting to solve. But, thinking about Eleanor’s words gives me fortitude to choose a problem that is really big, even if at the start I don’t always feel like I can do it.
That’s where my team comes in. We have started to break apart the reasons why low-income people tend not to save money. Do they even have a bank account? Well as it turns out, in Pittsburgh 12.8% of people don’t have a bank account, and 23% are underbanked (underbanked is defined by the Assets and Opportunity Local Data Center as a person who has a checking/savings account but has used an alternative financial service in the past 12 months). This means that about a third of Pittsburgh’s population is underserved by the current financial system, and that is not a trivial problem. According to an article by Andrea Levere, President of the Corporation for Enterprise Development “On average, an “unbanked” person spends $1,000 a year on financial services, paying to cash a check or paying high interest on an expensive payday loan, she said.” Our idea is to convert that $1000 a year that people spend to get access to his or her own money, and have them put at least some of it in savings, to create an emergency fund.
Underbanked in Pittsburgh:
http://assetsandopportunity.org/localdata/
Through this project we will continue to break down the reasons why some people have no savings. We have discussed culture, education, intimidation and access as possible reasons why people don’t use traditional financial institutions, and we will continue to conduct research to pinpoint exactly what we think the root of this problem is.
My team has taken time to think about what unique solution will we bring to this issue. I am pretty new at design thinking but the mantra that I kept coming back to when discussing potential solutions was from Tim Brown’s Ted Talk, which stressed a good solution should be at the intersection of desirability, viability and feasibility.
Working with the diverse perspectives of my teammates is helping to make this happen. I have an education and non-profit background, Shawneil has a consultant’s eye, Katie likes to see the big picture and Jenn spots the details we might need. With two Public Policy students and two HCI students our group feels balanced and so far effective at communicating and execution. By the end of this 16-week class maybe we will find this problem is too big to solve by ourselves or maybe our innovation idea can become part of the next step the Mayor wants to take on this project. Either way, we have big plans, and I am excited to see how it all turns out!
-Beth, Team 5
References:
1) http://assetsandopportunity.org/localdata/
3) http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_brown_urges_designers_to_think_big?language=e
A Collaborative Effort Between Beth, Shawneil, Jenn, and Katie
Nearly half (45%) of all households in major American cities are financially vulnerable—without assets or adequate savings to cover basic expenses for even three months in the event of an emergency, such as a job loss or health crisis (Family Assets Count). The inability to bounce back from financial pitfalls is not only a detriment to families, but also to the economic growth of the cities in which they live. The mayor’s office has thrown its support behind Bank On Greater Pittsburgh (BOGP), a new initiative of the Urban League, in order to increase financial literacy within the city. Mayor Peduto has stated: “More than 10% of Pittsburgh residents have no bank account and another 19% rely heavily on risky alternative financial tools such as payday loans, check-cashing shops, and rent-to-own arrangements. This represents more than 130,000 households living without financial security.”
Vision for Success
The first question we wanted to address was the definition of a successful financial literacy program in Pittsburgh. BOGP has had some attention in the local press including CBS news interviews and podcasts with both the CEO of the Urban League, Esther Bush, and Howard Slaughter, Jr., chairman of the BOGP. Together, they have put together a long list of partners both in terms of financial institutions and community organizations with the initial goal of helping people get bank accounts.
Therefore, one quantitative measure of success could be lowering those unbanked rates. But we brainstormed some further areas in which BOGP may be able to innovate. They are well on their way to becoming the central resource when seeking financial help in which anyone can call and get advice or be directed to the right partner organization.
However, we also want to focus their resources on spearheading tailored solutions to the diverse neighborhoods of Pittsburgh. We are hypothesizing that citizens of different neighborhoods have different financial struggles and we want the resources available to them to be applicable to their situation. We found via http://assetsandopportunity.org/localdata/ that Allegheny county is actually doing better in terms of poverty asset rates and banking rates than many of the surrounding areas, so we hope to provide a tailorable model for other counties and cities in five years’ time.
We want to create an overall environment of fiscal responsibility and education in which the clients of BOGP feel 100% confident that they can meet at least one of their financial goals; they should not need to turn to financial institutions that only offer quick fixes or scams. Simply put, the goal is to help break the cycle of poverty in which citizens don’t feel crushed by a financial crisis and can help themselves get out of it. We are thinking of solutions both in terms of quick/easy versus the best solution and the tradeoffs that occur between the two. Researching budgets will be key in determining what is possible for BOGP to achieve.
Personas
In order to capture the wide variety of financial issues in Pittsburgh, we are targeting all people simply in need of a “Fresh Financial Start.” These may include, but are not limited to those: with high debt, coming out of the criminal justice system, supporting children, with health crises (chronic illness), starting a business, with a failed business, withpersonal bankruptcy, intimidated by established financial institutions, paying for school, newly divorced, buying a house, under-employed, and may encompass other social issues such as gambling addiction. This is the lens in which we decided to view the process of seeking help and began brainstorming innovative ways to connect community members with the resources that BOGP and others are providing.
Communication Design
We understand that the communication design of this service is integral to its impact and sustainability. Therefore, we have developed multiple approaches to initially connecting people with the service:
We are assuming that BOGP is willing to take the lead on becoming the central financial literacy institution for Pittsburgh community members.
They are already connected to several community and financial partners across town. It is important to note that, before BOGP, there were a few niche providers of financial and savings services, and no central chamber. These tend to serve a targeted group, such as women or public housing residents. Not all the community partners we’ve found across Pittsburgh are included in BOGP. Few of the community partners identified in BOGP have financial literacy as their primary service offering. At this time, we are speculating that there was not much funding for an initiative such as this one before the mayor’s support and the partnership with the United Way Impact Fund. Absent a central service, we believe that it was harder for a user to find where to go for support.
New Approach: Financial Services Community Meet-Ups
o These will be small group meet-ups run by a community liasion (volunteer from the space) and financial experts (ideally employed by BOPG) who will be a part of the community for an extended period of time
o This is an opportunity for the service to meet its users where they are, e.g. churches, schools, workplaces, community centers (LGBTQ), halfway houses (and institutions of incarceration)
o Moves away from technology and brings in the human interaction; trust-building between community and the service
o This is an opportunity for the users to become empowered by seeing others, like themselves, take the initiative to become financially literate; “Power in seeing other people getting help too”
Supplemental Approaches:
o Central Location – available space for call center, special appointments, extra workshops, and for financial/community partners to share ideas. In the past, there has been a tangle of organizations providing similar services which needs to be streamlined.
o Call-line – promise to immediately connect callers to the resources they need. As is, Bush and Slaughter have stated that they will bring a call-line to BOGP, but this has not yet been realized.
o Website – make sure BOGP website is clear and easy to use for those who are computer literate; it should be the first thing that comes up when searching for financial help in Pittsburgh. We are also recommending to remove prohibitive language from the site.
Primary Publicity: Newsletters and Bulletins (community, church, hospitals, schools, legal system (e.g. bankruptcy filings, monetary related crimes); TV & Radio ads
Things to take into account:
o Labor Cost associated with each communication and awareness channel
o The budget for such a service
o The budget constraints of such a service
Pilot Program
We are envisioning a pilot model in one neighborhood that we can evaluate the success of before scaling to other neighborhoods. For our initial neighborhood, we are weighing the pros/cons of choosing an established neighborhood (East Liberty) versus a gentrifying one that has received recent support, attention, and funding (Lawrenceville). We will be conducting interviews in the coming week(s) in the chosen neighborhood to have a better understanding of the demographics there so that we can tailor the offerings as appropriate. We will be speaking to members that meet our profile in that geographic region that would belong to one of our centers of the proposed financial meet-up.
It will be important to determine how many full-time subject matter expert caseworkers are needed in this neighborhood (e.g. one debt specialist, one education specialist, one small business specialist) to determine a sustainable, individual caseload, in addition to who can be supported by the budget. This subject matter expert will really “own” this area and be the caseworker who handles all people that fall within the scope of this subject. Of course not all cases will be clear-cut, and subject matter experts will have to get up to speed about some of their client’s adjacent issues.
Regarding caseload, we like the idea of having one consistent face for each “client:” you would be introduced to this subject matter expert at the meet-up and then follow-up with that same subject matter expert for as long as necessary. We are considering an “HMO” model, whereby a specialist focuses on areas that can be covered in 0-3 sessions, while those that have more complex issues will be referred to a longer-term specialist. This way we can have the primary specialists rotate through the same community centers introducing themselves to new clients and being able to welcome and follow-up with a steady stream. They are intended to be the first faces that a client gets to know.
After the introduction to the caseworker at the financial meetup, the caseworker will follow up with the client in 1-2 weeks, capturing more specific information about themselves, and recording it, including personal history and specific financial issues. Afterwards, one-on-one counseling sessions will be planned for a certain date and time. This could be a meeting at the center office, or even have the caseworker meet them at a place of their choosing. If neither of those are an option, a phone conversation will be scheduled. It is up to the caseworker to determine how many sessions are optimal; towards the end of the session, it is also the caseworker’s responsibility to capture data about the client’s progress towards his/her goals, in a standardized format. This is for the purposes of internal review, monitoring, and evaluation. These questions may mirror some of the questions made during the first follow-up call, including: how close do you feel to meeting your financial goals? what bank accounts do you currently have? what does your budget look like? on a scale of 1-7, what is your knowledge of options to handle debt?
In addition to subject matter experts, we will be relying on one community liaison volunteer per meet-up center to serve as host/hostess.
After executing this pilot model, we would like to review what worked and what didn’t, before right-sizing the financial literacy program for a different neighborhood, including choosing financial meet-up locations, staff hires, and determining the subject matter of specific services offered.
Appendix A: Proposed Timeline
Appendix B: Sample Research
Design and Policy 