Jessica Grant-Domond is a senior community development analyst and Suzanne Cummings is community development outreach communications manager, both in Regional & Community Outreach at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The Boston Fed’s Working Places (WP) initiative model for community building emphasizes the importance of teams making fundamental changes to the way they work. First, they learn all they can about the current structure that isn’t delivering the desired outcome; then, they seek out and use all available tools and information to workshop solutions.

Committing to a learning orientation and using data means having the willingness to tackle hard questions about your community and the problem you’re addressing. It means using evidence—both formal data and firsthand accounts from people experiencing the issue—to better inform decisions about strategies and priorities. And it requires continuously assessing the effectiveness of efforts along the way and knowing when to take a step back and change course if the evidence points to a sounder approach.

In this Invested Interprets, we hear from three WP leaders in Connecticut about their experiences applying learning orientation and data use in their community initiatives. Shanay Fulton is the initiative director for Working Cities Challenge of Middletown, Tomas Olivo is the initiative director for Working Cities Challenge of Waterbury, and Kevin Taylor is a key partner and executive director at Neighborhood Housing Services of Waterbury.

The views expressed are not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston or the Federal Reserve System. Information about organizations, programs, and events is strictly informational and not an endorsement.