ABSTRACT The article describes a community intervention within a community social work course for second-year students, based on an academy-community partnership. Defining loneliness among older adults as a social issue, students designed and implemented an intervention using the photovoice methodology and community-based participatory research. The process included community mapping, data collection through interviews, and needs assessments, leading to an intervention plan in collaboration with organizations in Be’er Sheva, Israel. Six elderly Holocaust survivors received photovoice training and documented their experiences with student support. The project culminated in the exhibition “Between Loneliness and Togetherness.” The article examines how a community social work course served as a resource for addressing social issues through academic-community collaboration.

ABSTRACT Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) immigrant caregivers of children with disabilities experience multiple compounding vulnerabilities, particularly to accessing high quality of care and support. This article illustrates a community-based participatory research (CBPR) initiative led by a grassroots coalition of immigrant caregivers of children with disabilities, advocates, interpreters, and researchers. The study examines multilevel health promoting and hindering factors to CLD immigrant mothers of children with disabilities using participatory, empowerment, and multilingual processes employed by the coalition in the form of a three-session virtual family institute. Focus groups with immigrant mothers’ speakers of Spanish (n = 3), Portuguese (n = 3), and Chinese (n = 2) were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) and concept mapping. Findings highlight specific multilevel factors that support and hinder CLD immigrant caregivers’ health and wellbeing. Additionally, participatory action research approaches in partnership with CLD immigrant caregivers can lead to enhanced linguistically and culturally responsive engagement practices, healthcare services, and family engagement.

ABSTRACT Organizing out of mutual interest is a powerful anchor for rigorous, principled white antiracist struggle. The mutual interest approach emphasizes that everyone, including white people, has a stake in ending white supremacy. Yet there is much to learn about how grassroots activists understand and relate to mutual interest. To address this gap, the current study asks: How do white antiracists express their personal journeys of exploring and relating to their mutual interest? Using a participatory action research approach, interviews were conducted with 26 white antiracist organizers, and thematic analysis was used to create 5 themes presented in this paper. The themes reveal that: white antiracists do not first arrive to antiracist organizing space because of mutual interest; there are challenges that stand in the way of people identifying their mutual interest; disconnection from others and self is a steep cost of racism for white people; experiences and identities across class, ability, gender, and other salient identities are anchoring points for mutual interest; imagination and visioning a transformed world are intimately connected to shared stake. This study’s contributions include: the key role of organizations in fostering mutual interest, the importance of critical consciousness, and the holistic entry points to mutual interest.

ABSTRACT As the number of guaranteed income projects grow across the United States, there has been increasing interest in understanding the role that services such as case management play in direct cash transfer programs. This study explores participant-perceived outcomes of receiving a guaranteed income and services from a homelessness service-providing agency including case management, housing navigation, and transitional housing. Researchers conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 participants of a guaranteed income project for adults experiencing homelessness. Rapid analysis was used to systematically organize the qualitative data and quickly share the findings with community partners. Findings suggest that participants perceive that the combination of cash and services helped ameliorate barriers to independent housing and allowed participants to access housing more quickly than they would have otherwise. Even in cases where participants had not accessed independent housing, findings suggest that building therapeutic and services-related relationships with clients in conjunction with a guaranteed income, helps participants feel an overall stability and structure and allows for movement toward independent housing, more autonomy, and the ability to build a financial safety net.

ABSTRACT In 2021, we piloted a three-part, critical place-based curriculum comprised (1) a digital mapping project, (2) an associated academic course, and (3) an affiliated group of peer-mentors at our university to interrogate racism in Lexington, Virginia. Believing that the best way to study race is to investigate its local topography, we tailored the course to provide students with opportunities to critically reflect upon Lexington, the place that has framed their college years. In detailing this curriculum and its associated pedagogies, we hope that it can serve as a prototype for other faculty who wish to engage students in antiracist work within their local communities.

ABSTRACT Black boys and young men come into consistent contact with the carceral state and its systems of control. In this study, I define the normalcy of carcerality as the everydayness of carceral power and control enacted on the bodies of Black children, specifically Black boys and young men. The racialized, gendered, and socioeconomic schemas of urban landscapes like Los Angeles bring young people into consistent contact with law enforcement and carceral logics rooted in punishment, control, and disposability – which is the way that communities can be punished and discarded if they do not fit within the neoliberal economy. For Black boys, the normalcy of carcerality is rooted in the omnipresence of the schemas of discipline they experience and the material and emotional impact that carcerality plays in their everyday life. Drawing upon interviews from 22 Black male youth activists, 19 interviews with youth workers who engage Black male youth, and 10 years of field notes as a community organizer working with four community-based organizations in Los Angeles, this study focuses on the carceral experiences that Black male youth activists who are working to change their relationships with state institutions through collective organizing and resistance.

ABSTRACT The present study piloted Innovation Change Lab (ICL), a novel intervention to promote antiracism and human-centered design (HCD) in a rural community. Data included (1) a pre- and post-survey of antiracist attitudes; (2) post-workshop feedback surveys, and (3) a focus group at the end of the training. Participants (n = 14) identified their race as White (n = 7), Latine (n = 3), Multiracial (n = 1); and their genders as cisgender women (n = 12) and cisgender men (n = 2). Attitude change was analyzed using one-tailed t-tests. Qualitative analysis of open-ended survey questions and focus group data was conducted using content analysis. Participants reported that, with some exceptions, the curriculum was feasible and acceptable. They reported increasing their knowledge about antiacism concepts and critical racial consciousness. ICL showed evidence of shifting individual attitudes toward antiracism and increasing one’s confidence in taking action on social justice. Learning about microaggressions, cross-group discussions about socialization and race, and conducting empathy interviews with folks impacted by racism were the most impactful aspects of the curriculum. Challenges arose around taking action to change systems implicated in sustaining racism. Despite challenges, findings suggest HCD may offer strategies to support intra- and inter-personal change necessary to move toward antiracist action.

ABSTRACT The goal of this study was to adopt the concept of climate, which has been researched extensively in the context of organizational psychology, to the study of communities and develop a scale for community climate of involvement. We demonstrate that communities can constitute a valid level of analysis for the study of climate. The scale development was done in two steps: Step 1, a qualitative investigation of 39 geographical community members, found evidence of the existence of climate in communities and identified a climate facet that is relevant to the study of communities – involvement. Based on the qualitative data collected in this step, we then developed a community involvement climate scale. Step 2 tested the reliability and homogeneity of the community involvement climate in a sample of 300 participants from six communities. The results of the study attest to the existence of climate in communities and provide a valid and reliable community involvement climate scale. We discuss the contributions of this study and suggest future studies on climate in communities.

ABSTRACT Immigration enforcement – or the surveillance, detention, and deportation of noncitizens – detrimentally impacts health, with spillover effects on the families of those targeted. However, less is known about how immigration enforcement impacts communities, regardless of the immigration statuses of members. Immigration worksite raids can involve hundreds of agents, helicopters, and buses descending unannounced upon rural towns with small Latino populations and removing dozens of members in a day. This egregious enforcement tactic presents the opportunity to better understand how communities organize to mitigate the harm of these events. We conducted semistructured interviews in Spanish and English in six communities that experienced the largest worksite raids in 2018. Participants were 77 adults who provided material, emotional, or professional support following raids. We used qualitative analysis methods to code all interviews and develop a timeline characterizing raid impact and response. The day of the raid is characterized by chaos, confusion, and fear, which resulted in hiding out in churches and schools and supporting the children of those who disappeared. The days and weeks that followed were characterized by hunger, resulting in multiple strategies aimed at keeping the community fed, along with efforts to re-integrate children into schools. Months after, communities began to organize rideshares and finally address health concerns. We end with recommendations to mitigate the community-wide damage of worksite raids while advocating against their use.

ABSTRACT Inter-organizational collaboration is central to Organizational Empowerment theory. It enables organizations to strengthen their capacity and to take collective action to achieve empowerment at multiple levels. Despite the growing significance of inter-organizational collaboration in addressing complex issues in our society, little is known about what facilitates or hinders collaboration between local organizations involved with community development in a neighborhood. By applying theories of organizational networks and Institutional Collective Action Framework (ICA), and Exponential Random Graph Modeling, this study analyzes the collaboration networks between 167 local organizations in Chicago in 2016. The results suggest that these local organizations are more likely to collaborate when they are the same type of organization and have a more diverse board of directors. It was also found that organizations built a bonding structure to cope with a challenging period for neighborhood organizations in Chicago. Overall, this study contributes to the understanding of empowerment literature by extending ICA and organizational network theories and a statistical approach to network analysis to describe mechanisms of organizational empowerment.