RMC's diverse public engagement projects involve initiatives to engage people in their communities for both personal and community benefits, such as deepening citizens' science knowledge for grounded decision-making and informed action. Our work includes designing and conducting engagement processes such as cross-role discussion groups for decision-makers and activities to increase parent involvement in schools. We seek to understand engagement from the perspective of capacity building at the individual, collective, and community levels, evaluating the impact of engagement efforts on policy and decision making when possible.

Highlights

Animating Democracy: Impact of Arts and Civic Engagement Projects
The RMC presentation Where's the Evidence?: The Arts and Civic Engagement Impact Initiative offers a framework and strategy for gathering evaluative evidence of the impact of arts and civic engagement projects. Developed on behalf of Americans for the Arts, Where's the Evidence? is one of RMC's contributions to the Animating Democracy project. Other RMC contributions to evaluating arts and civic engagement projects are available on the Americans for the Arts website.

Parent Leadership Programs Evaluation for the CT Commission on Children
The Connecticut Commission on Children engaged RMC to develop recommendations for the evaluation of its statewide parent leadership programs. The state's Parent Leadership Training Initiative aims to prepare and empower parents to catalyze change in their schools and communities to improve outcomes for all students. In addition to evaluation recommendations, we produced case studies and an alumni survey to inform a model for understanding how community engagement can improve schools. 

Jumpstart-Experience Corps Pilot Evaluation
Contracted by Civic Ventures, RMC's conducted an evaluation of a collaboration between Jumpstart and Experience Corps in which older adult volunteers tutored preschool children. The Jumpstart model, developed for implementation by college students, was pilot-tested in Boston with older adult volunteers from the local Generations Incorporated program. Read the Executive Summary.

Other Work:

• A two-year evaluation of Home Visiting New Hampshire, a state-funded program that provides home-based health, education, and other services to Medicaid-eligible pregnant women and their families
• RMC was the external evaluator for a three-year national initiative funded by the federal Centers for Disease Control to study the Dorchester (MA) Community Roundtable, a coordinated community responses to intimate partner violence
• Through surveys, focus groups, and interviews, RMC documented public perceptions of the Manchester (NH) public schools and made recommendations for how the Chamber of Commerce and business leaders can strengthen their collaboration with city schools