Sustainability Defined
Sustainability in a community change initiative is about using results to manage the work, using data to keep it on track, and making sure residents and other local partners are engaged in authentic ways.
As Making Connections--the Casey Foundation’s decade-long initiative to improve outcomes for children and families living in destitute neighborhoods--matured, focus on sustaining the work long-term accelerated. In this reflection, Smith lays out the core principles of and success factors for shifting day-to-day management of the initiative from Casey to local partners.
Lessons from Casey’s work and that of other national and local investors in long-term initiatives underscored the importance of making sure these efforts help build the local capacity, energy and will needed to scale up better outcomes for kids and families and influences changes in policy and practice needed to achieve those results at greater scale.