We are a collective impact initiative of community organizations, corporations, civic institutions, and individuals who come together to address the needs of youth and young adults in Louisville, Kentucky who are disconnected, out of school and work due to structural racism, poverty, homelessness, educational disruption, childhood trauma, and related challenges.
Source-What Is Collective Impact – Collective Impact Forum
What is a Collective Impact Initiative?
Collective impact brings people together in a structured way to achieve social change through a network of community members, organizations, and institutions who advance equity by learning together, aligning, and integrating their actions to achieve population and systems level change.
Conditions of Collective Impact
- It starts with a common agenda. This means coming together to collectively define the problem and create a shared vision to solve it.
- It establishes shared measurement. That means tracking progress in the same way, allowing for continuous learning and accountability.
- It fosters mutually reinforcing activities. That means integrating the participants’ many different activities to maximize the end result.
- It encourages continuous communications. That means building trust and strengthening relationships.
- And it has a strong backbone. That means having a team dedicated to aligning and coordinating the work of the group.
Strategies of Collective Impact
- Ground the work in data and context, and target solutions.
- Focus on systems change, in addition to programs and services.
- Shift power within the collaborative.
- Listen to and act with community.
- Build equity leadership and accountability.
5 Pillars of CSYA’s Collective impact
The fruits of our collective impact initiative manifest through our mission as we walk alongside our Youth and Young Adults, helping them bring form to the future they envision. It is through collective impact that we SPARK change as WE:
Support disconnected Youth and Young Adults by providing them a space to be heard, programs to get involved with, and individuals who care and want to continue to invoke change.
Partner with community organizations, corporations, civic institutions, and individuals to address the needs of disconnected Youth and Young Adults
Advocate for Youth and Young Adults to both understand and expand the reach of their needs.
[RE]Engage disconnected Youth and Young Adults to programs, individuals, and services and communities.
Know… where Youth and Young Adults are, what they want to see and will engage in. What system-level issues need to be addressed and that no single organization, public agency, or philanthropist can address the needs of our community’s disconnected youth and young adults. Solutions are possible only through coordinated, collaborative efforts.
History of CSYA
In February 2011, Chef Nancy Russman’s concern that there were few services for struggling young adults in our community was the catalyst for a convening of a wide variety of service providers to determine whether there was sufficient interest in looking deeper into, and responding to, the situation. That initial convocation launched an effort that is still growing today.
Building on that initial interest and support, a second Community Meeting was held a few months later, and determined that the mission of the effort would be “To bring the community together to focus on Young Adults 16-24 who are in crisis without support.” And so the Coalition Supporting Young Adults was launched. Essential to the development of the coalition are CSYA’s fiscal sponsors over the last 10 years, the Coalition for the Homeless, YMCA Safe Place, and Youth Build Louisville.