Somerville Community Health Agenda (SCHA)

The Somerville Community Health Agenda (SCHA) is the other node I just added. It's an organization that works closely with the Cambridge Cambridge Health Alliance, Somerville Healt Department, and the community that works to improve the health of Somerville residents. They do a lot of collecting and assessing community health data, and support other community coalitions that work on issues which affect health and quality of life such as substance abuse prevention, youth development, children's oral health, nutrition, etc. etc. Like SCALE, they were very interested in what we are doing, and especially since SCHA already has so many connections to other community organizations, I think they would be avid users of the network. One thing is when I added the node, I noticed there was already one called Somerville Health Agenda - is that the same thing?

Somerville Center for Adult Learning and Education (SCALE)

I just added two new nodes to the map, the first being SCALE. Essentially, SCALE is an organization under the Somerville Public School system that provides classes for adults in basic education, secondary education (GED), and English Language Learning (ELL). It is a fairly big program, serving about 1200 adult a year, and fun fact, is funded in part by Tufts. I asked the woman I talked to about SCALE in relation to the economy, and she said they have been affected in two main ways - decreased funding and decreased number of students attending class. Their enrollment numbers remained the same, however, indicating that people wanted to continue their education. It's just the economic situation forced many of their students to pick up more jobs or longer hours, and as a result weren't able to come. She also said that SCALE has recently increased its services a bit in an attempt to help their students get social services support and subsidies outside the classroom, so that hopefully they can spend more time in it. The woman seemed very interested in our project and I think is definitely someone would participate once it is up and running.

Helping Communities Help Themselves

Just over a week ago the Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to two academics, including the first woman ever to win that prize, Elinor Ostrom. When I was reading about Elinor I thought back to the starfish story we discussed in class a couple of weeks ago. Elinor's work specifically deals with government interventions in communities. She has been quoted as saying that often times communities can fix their problems better on their own than with government intervention because those within the community have a better understanding of their needs. It made me think of how we discussed that the starfish may not necessarily have wanted the help they received when being thrown in the water.

More about the Nobel Prize here: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/10/12/nobel.economics/index.html

Mock Up Design

The mock-up designs we received in class last week were a marked improvement on the map we've been working with currently. There is still a long way to go, however, to make it as user friendly as possible.

As someone who has accounts on multiple social networking sites, the user interface is the number one factor in whether or not people use it. I feel like usability is the new ergonomics -- instead of adapting our physical tools and objects to fit our hands and bodies, we have to adapt our online web technology to make it as easy to use as possible.

As cliche as it sounds, Facebook has done it right: a nice, simple, illustrative graphic on the left, and the "Sign Up!" feature is nice and prominent. The site isn't too cluttered, and only the pertinent information is featured.


The Twitter homepage is great too because it shows what people are talking about. Imagine that -- a communication site that shows recent communication and encourages people to "Join the Conversation" as a sign-up.

I think getting the homepage right is the most important, because it has to be welcoming and get people in the door before this site becomes useful.

Somerville Chamber of Commerce

The Somerville Chamber of Commerce is the leading group of local businesses and serves as a community for local employers, business owners, and interested parties to come together to discuss and address the future of Somerville’s business community. They are very focused on the idea that Somerville is a diverse community where small businesses can thrive, and when I talked to them they were very eager to show all the areas where this has been proven.

We had a very brief conversation, but a lot of the areas highlighted had to do with how Somerville has been divvied up into “squares” and places like Davis Square, Ball Square, and the new up-and-coming Magoun Square are highlighted as hubs of the small business community.

 

The chamber is a member driven and funded organization that takes voluntary dues to pay for its endeavors. Since there are hundreds of members, that really is the strength of the organization. 

Somerville Commission on Energy Use and Climate Change

The SCEUCC (less clever in terms of the acronym) has no website, just a half-hearted attempt at a web page. I emailed them over a week ago, and haven't heard back from their listed contact, Vithal Deshpande.


Buuuuut, I found an article, with an amazing YouTube video embedded. The video essentialy answers our basic needs in a matter of seconds, so check it out :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czJewqeBQ8c&feature=player_embedded

According to Andrea Ranger, chair of the SCEUCC, they work with the Somerville Climate Action : "A way to get invovled with the commision -- first tuesday of every month meets at the Tufts Administration building". The Somerville Climate Action is an organization that is part of the Massachusetts Climate Action Network, which organizes grassroots activities to get the public involved.

An article in Wicked Local states about the SCEUCC that, "specifically, the commission has worked on the issue of energy performance contracting, which replaces equipment where needed to save energy; locates areas where the city might need technical assistance; and encourages the city to assess energy consumption."

Ranger was also quoted saying that no energy is good energy. Not exactly sure what she meant by that, but she seems determined to eliminate unnecessary energy use.

Phillips Brooks House

"The Phillips Brooks House Association strives for social justice. As a student-run organization, we draw upon the creative initiative of students and community members to foster collaboration that empowers individuals and communities. Through social service and social action, PBHA endeavors to meet community needs and promote social awareness and community involvement at Harvard and beyond. PBHA is a student-run, staff supported public service/social action organization at Harvard College providing a variety of services to the Greater Boston community. PBHA is often called "the best course at Harvard." For more than a century PBHA programs have provided vital experiences for generations of leaders in service and activism, simultaneously developing real, meaningful community partnerships.

"PBHA today is comprised of more than 70 programs, with over 1600 volunteers participating in a wide range of service activities. The cabinet, still at the heart of governance of the organization, continues to play an important role, both in setting and managing the vision for PBHA as we head into our second century."

And here is an important youtube video about PBHA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCISiaxCTtI&feature=player_embedded


Who do they work with? PBHA is an umbrella for many things such as, for example, Harvard STAGE (Student Theatre Advancing Growth and Empowerment -- nice acronym huh?). They have over 1600 active volunteers and have done work world-wide since the 1920s. They are partial autonomous but still heavily in association with Harvard College (they kept switching from college to university).

Tufts University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute

After a few weeks, my first community group got back to me. The Tufts University Osher Lifelong Learning Institute has connections with a few local groups, including Councils on Aging. They are very interested in working in Somerville, and I think that our map could really help them target their audience of older people looking for learning opportunities. I added them as a node on the map.

My two other community contacts have not gotten back to me, or have responded that they will get back to me soon. The Medford Somerville Unitarian Universalist Church and the Somerville Public School District were my two contacts, and I'll keep trying to contact them.

Declining Social Trust

In Putnam’s piece, he argues a trend toward the decline in what he calls the social trust, particularly of the “generalized other.” Recognizing the threat this poses to civic engagement, he argues that a continued decline in social trust will lead to the erosion of social collaboration in all fields. Drawing from his research, he also noted that this decline was particularly evident among youth populations. Considering the target population of our social networking map, this issue is particularly relevant to the success of our project. As with any social network, there is a certain degree of risk in joining it. The objectives of the map would obviously be facilitated by included the most contact information. At the same time, increasing the amount of contact information—particularly when given by an individual—increases the risk factor. How can we mediate such risks so as to reduce such disincentives for participation? One solution to the privacy issue of individuals would be to personalize privacy settings, which would make the user feel most in control of their experience on the site. What other disincentives for participation are we going to run into and what are different avenues can we use to increase the sense of social trust felt by users of the map?

STEP

I'm not really sure where we are supposed to be putting the responses to our economic recovery questions. STEP took time and gave a great detailed response to the questions so I thought that other people might want to know whats up and thus I am posting it to the blog:

Q. How is your organization dealing with the economic downturn? Is it affecting your organization? What about the population that your organization serves?

A. STEP is a transportation advocacy group that is all-volunteer. We operate with a very small budget and have done so before and after the downturn. We are not a service delivery organization so we do not have clients per se. We do serve the entire Somerville community and I would say that the economic downturn has refocused many peoples’ time and attention to personal economic survival. It is always difficult to do extensive outreach to environmental justice communities because it is very time-intensive, and as a volunteer organization, that is challenging.

Q. In your opinion, what is the main economic need in Somerville?

A. The city of Somerville receives one of the largest state subsidies through local aid because we have very little commercial tax revenue compared to many other cities. Although Somerville is not as poor as Lawrence and Chelsea, because of this we receive a similar percentage of state aid. This limits our ability to provide needed services that are not based on grants. There are very few jobs in Somerville so most employed residents must travel to other cities and towns to work. Where Cambridge has more jobs than residents, Somerville has way more residents than jobs. We have higher property taxes than Cambridge and this is a problem for low and moderate income families to buy and stay in the city. We need to do smart economic development that will bring new companies and jobs to the city and increase our commercial tax revenues.

Q. We're trying to understand how people and organizations in Somerville are connected. What are the three (or more) most important partnerships you have -- OR -- the organizations you work most closely with?

A. STEP is a member of the Community Corridor Planning Coalition with Groundwork Somerville, Somerville Community Corporation and the Somerville Health Agenda. We work with them on community involvement in planning the Green Line extension and the land uses around the station.

STEP also collaborates and its work and some members overlap with the Mystic View Task Force which focuses primarily on economic development issues and in particular on Assembly Square. Both groups work on issues associated with the effects of mobile pollution on people living near high volume highways and arterials. STEP works with the Union Square Main Streets, East Somerville Main Streets and the Chamber of Commerce on issues associated with land use and economic development. STEP also works with the Somerville Bicycle Committee and the Friends of the Community Path to promote better bicycling and pedestrian access through the city and in particular on extending the Community Path along the Green Line into Cambridge and downtown Boston.