What is Focus Families?

Focus Families is a research project established to gauge the effectiveness of the Making Connections Initiative in improving the lives of families in the Martindale Brightwood and Southeast neighborhoods.

Families will be asked to share their experiences with the following MC Indy core result area:

  • Early Childhood Learning & Education
  • Building Financial Assets & Increasing Household Income
  • Involvement & Leadership in the Community

How will participating in this project help my family?
This project will follow families to see if they’re connected to all three areas, to help them get connected to helpful programs and services, and to learn how their lives are changed when they do get connected.  This project will connect families to multiple resources while helping us to determine how our initiatives are benefiting families, and what we can do to better serve the community.

Families who complete the enrollment form and follow up survey will receive a $25 Kroger gift card. The project coordinator will also contact the families every three to six months to invite them to a focus group where they will receive an additional $25 Kroger gift card for taking part in the focus group.  They will be asked questions about the services they are receiving and their engagement in neighborhood activities. Organizations and individuals are needed to refer families to the program, for which they will receive compensation ($25 per family-by check to organizations and gift cards to individuals).

Who can participate?
To participate in the project, your family must:

  • live within the boundaries of Martindale Brightwood or Southeast areas
  • have children ages 0-10
  • agree to talk to the project coordinator and other researchers in one-on-one, confidential conversations and group conversations (focus groups)

How do I sign up?
Contact Lisa Osterman, project coordinator, at (317) 413-0777 to complete the enrollment form and follow up survey.


What is a Local Learning Partnership?

A Local Learning Partnership (LLP) is an organization with data-related expertise or interest in each Making Connections site currently charged with contributing to the overall results of the initiative through substantial contributions in three areas:

  • Development of outcomes, measures, and strategies to achieve results
  • Local and cross-site evaluation
  • Creating a learning community

LLPs were created by the Foundation to emphasize its belief that the effective use of data is essential to identifying, implementing and sustaining strategies to meet Making Connections goals and ensure that change occurs and is sustained. By creating a team focused on current, valid, relevant data that serve as information to propel change, with its own resource stream, the Foundation ensures that data remain prominent in the multifaceted Making Connections strategies.

LLPs are unconventional alliances that bring traditional data sources and users together with front-line data producers and residents. LLPs have different structures, participants, and priorities shaped by their communities.

These alliances are designed to support both Making Connections and to provide resource for broader community needs through:

  • Improving community access to information. This means putting data in the hands of residents for practical uses and taking the mystery out of data collection and use.
  • Enhancing local ability to use data for advocacy, planning and decision-making to strengthen families and neighborhoods, and to use data to hold others accountable.
  • Creating a quantitative and qualitative baseline that will allow local stakeholders and the Foundation to monitor changes in families and the neighborhood.

It serves 3 major functions:

  • Collect and share data and information about the outcomes of Making Connections for learning and evaluation purposes
  • Support the Neighborhood Learning Partnerships in the two Making Connections neighborhoods
  • Provide technical assistance with community research and evaluation for local and national projects

Neighborhood Learning Partnerships

The Neighborhood Learning Partnerships are groups of residents and other community stakeholders who see study the neighborhood and give what is learned to the people who live and work in the neighborhood to use as tools to strengthen the community.

The NLPS are groups of residents and other community stakeholders who see study the neighborhood and give what is learned to the people who live and work in the neighborhood to use as tools to strengthen the community.

Martindale Brightwood Local Learning Partnership (MBLLP)

Our mission and purpose is to provide the data and resources needed to enable the citizens and leadership of Martindale Brightwood to make the decisions necessary to serve the best interests of the community.

The ultimate goal of the Martindale Brightwood Local Learning Partnership is to create or increase local acceptance and integration of continuous learning and evaluation practice in all aspects of community change.

The MBLLP responds to requests in the community for data and information. At the request of the Greater Citizens’ Coalition of Martindale Brightwood (GCCMB), the MBLLP has agreed to collect data to inform the 2007-2011 GCCMB Community Plan. The GCCMB Community Plan has four goals about which the MBLLP collects data:

  • Increase the Household Income of All Families Above the Poverty Level
  • Decrease Crime in the Neighborhood
  • Increase Early Childhood Education in Martindale Brightwood
  • Improve the Environmental Quality of the Neighborhood

For more information, or to be added to the MBLLP mailing list, please call 632-4599.

Southeast Learning Partnership (SELP)

The Southeast Learning Partnershipis a partnership between southeast area residents and non-profit organizations working to build community and improve the lives of families and children in the neighborhoods on the Southeast side of Indianapolis.

The SELP is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation Making Connections Initiative. We meet monthly to provide information and resources to neighborhood organizations and agencies working to make positive changes in the community.

The SELP also tracks data to measure changes in the lives of families and the neighborhood. We ask questions like, “What resources are available to south- east families? Are programs successful? Is anyone better off?”

To answer these questions, we collect historical data, conduct surveys, and record the stories in the community through process documentation. Sometimes these questions are hard to answer and the information is hard to find.

Different kinds of data and information can be used to understand more about the community and solve problems. The government, businesses, and non-profit organizations use data and information everyday to make decisions—residents and neighborhoods can too.

The SELP helps make data and information affordable, available, and useful for planning, evaluation, or just learning more about the community.

What would you like to know?
Anyone who lives or works in the Southeast area of Indianapolis can participate in the monthly meetings. Meetings are on the second Wednesday of each month from 5:00-7:00 p.m. at Southeast Community Services (located on the second floor of the Fountain Square Center 901 Shelby Street.

Please come and be part of the information sharing! You earn voting privileges by coming to meetings.

Any organization needing data or information can ask the SELP for support. Support includes financial and or technical assistance in gathering information that advances community building work. Requests are considered at the monthly meetings, and are voted on by the voting members of the SELP.

For more information, or to be added to the SELP mailing list, please call 632-4599.