CNCS 2018 Research Grant Competition: Community Conversations

Overview

<p>CNCS’s mission is to improve lives, strengthen communities, and foster civic engagement through service and volunteering. Through AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and the Volunteer Generation Fund, CNCS has helped to engage millions of citizens in meeting community and national challenges through service and volunteer action. The broad focus of the competition is to engage communities in conversations about their civic health using participatory research approaches to facilitate civic engagement and strengthen community capacity to address local issues, both of which are central to CNCS’s mission. This research competition will award funds to institutions of higher education to support academics and applied researchers who work with and in local communities to use a participatory research approach to:<br>• actively engage residents and other local stakeholders in a research process, <br>• identify a local issue of concern to the community, <br>• understand what may facilitate or hinder participation to address the issue, and <br>• create a collaborative action plan to increase civic engagement and build relationships to tackle the community-identified issue.<br>CNCS seeks to support participatory research in three types of communities, with equal priority: communities that are already working collaboratively to tackle a locally identified issue; communities that have experienced a disaster; and communities in social crisis. Activities to be funded through this competition include:</p> <p>supporting academics, applied researchers, and other university staff, such as graduate students, working with and in communities;<br>creating and establishing a research team, training a research team to engage in the research process, and project meetings;<br>using a participatory research approach to actively engage residents and other local stakeholders in a research process to identify a local issue and understand the factors that facilitate or hinder community participation in tackling the issue;<br>developing a community-driven action plan that includes and incorporates the perspective and feedback from local stakeholders to tackle a community issue;<br>making presentations or developing material to report results such as reports, or other publications such as journal articles and briefs, and creating other culturally appropriate material such as videos, podcasts, performances, etc.;<br>implementing an action plan to tackle a community identified issue and examining outcomes of the participatory research project in terms of project goals, skill-building, strengthening networks, community engagement and other relevant outcomes; and,<br>building networks and relationships with organizations, institutions, and decision makers to strengthen civic infrastructure and tackle the community-identified issue.<br>Although not required, applicants may consider incorporating national service into some aspect of the project design including, but not limited to: being part of the research team, serving as an audience to hear from the research team about the study findings, and participating as partners in an action plan to tackle a community issue.</p>