|
NNIP PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
The Boston Foundation Boston Community Building Network
The Boston Community Building Network (BCBN) at the Boston Foundation offers the neutral ground of the foundation for mutual learning, dialogue, analysis, and the creation of strategic alliances. In so doing, the BCBN assists the Boston Foundation to catalyze and build upon the vast strengths and assets of the Greater Boston community: its nonprofit, private, and public institutions; its growing racial and cultural diversity; and residents' ideas and shared aspirations for the future. The BCBN also takes the concepts that emerged during the ground-breaking Boston Persistent Poverty Project and gives them back to the community in the form of collaborative community-building tools. These tools are the Boston Children and Families Database, the Boston Community Building Curriculum, and the Boston Indicators of Change, Progress, and Sustainability—a civic process cosponsored with the City of Boston's Sustainable Boston Initiative. PARTNER BIOGRAPHIES: Charlotte Kahn directs the Boston Community Building Network at the Boston Foundation. The Boston Community Building Network convenes leaders and residents from Greater Boston to strengthen networks and relationships, exchange information, develop solutions to shared challenges and effect changes in public policy and community practice. At the Boston Foundation, Ms. Kahn initiated a partnership with area universities, city and state agencies and community-based organizations to develop the Boston Children and Families Database, which includes more than 800 data points. Ms. Kahn also works in partnership with the City of Boston's Sustainable Boston Initiative and more than 300 representatives of community-based, city, state and federal agencies and organizations to develop and refine the Boston Indicators of Change, Progress and Sustainability. She is also working in partnership with others on the Boston Community Building Curriculum, designed to support the development of grassroots leaders in Greater Boston. Ms. Kahn directed the Public Education Fund of the Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts as well as Boston Urban Gardeners, a community-based organization. She attended Cornell University, holds a Masters Degree in Organizational Development from Antioch University and was awarded a Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She serves as Vice President of the Codman Square Health Care Center in Dorchester, the neighborhood in which she resides. Holly St. Clair is a senior research and data analyst of the Metro Data Center, Metropolitan Area Planning Council, where she is responsible for data management, data analysis, policy research, and the creation of an on-line interactive data resource for the Boston Metropolitan Area. Ms. St. Clair also coordinates the Boston Children and Families Database, a data resource for Boston's neighborhoods. Before joining the Council, Ms. St. Clair worked as a research and development analyst for the City of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development in the Research and Development Unit, publishing the quarterly document of Boston housing trends "Real Estate Trends" and developing systems for real estate analysis. Ms. St. Clair holds a Masters of Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University and a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Policy from Boston University. Ms. St. Clair serves as vice president of the Boston Green Space Alliance and also volunteers with the Gallery @ Green Street. |