Promise Neighborhoods
Overview
The Promise Neighborhoods program is a place-based approach focused on addressing generational family and community poverty by ensuring quality educational opportunities and providing a range of supports for children, youth, families, and communities.
The program provides examples of interagency collaboration at the federal level, intra-agency collaboration within the Department of Education, and local level collaborations at grantee sites across the country.
The collaboration structure includes the following elements:
Federal level—
- Coordinated efforts across Department of Education programs
- Coordinated efforts across federal agencies and involvement in the White House Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative (NRI)
- Coordinated technical assistance support for grantees
Local level—
- Established partnerships with a range of entities
- Multiple levels of management, including a project director and advisory board
- Funding from public, private, and federal sources
- Tracking progress through longitudinal databases and other mechanisms
Promising practices include the following:
Federal level—
- Modeling other federal level collaborations
- Building on past experience with federal level collaboration
- Integrating Promise Neighborhoods work with other federal initiatives
- Having multiple mechanisms for ongoing and regular communication
- Reliance on data to assess the success of the work
Local level—
- Involving the communities in planning and implementation
- Conducting a needs assessment to understand the context of communities
- Putting a plan in place before implementation
Promise Neighborhoods programs have faced challenges at the federal and local level and learned the following lessons:
- Recognition of complex and varied work is essential for managing multiple unique grantees.
- Development of a longitudinal data system and sharing data can pose a challenge.
- Communities need support to create sustained financial resources, community engagement, and partnerships.
Learn about the collaboration's accomplishments and see additional resources for more information about the Promise Neighborhoods program.
