Linda Silka

I am a Professor in the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. I specialize in community capacity building, program evaluation, refugee and immigrant leadership development, community-university partnerships, community mapping, strategic planning, needs assessment, and community conflict resolution. I am also director of the Center for Family, Work, and Community at the university and co-director of the university's Community Outreach Partnership Center.

Below I have described some of the community-based initiatives currently being carried out through the Center for Family, Work, and Community in partnership with the Department of Regional Economic and Social Development.

Refugee and Immigrant Leadership Training and Development

The CIRCLE Project for refugee and immigrant leadership began in 1993, and has been conducted jointly with UMass Amherst and UMass Boston. CIRCLE was funded through a multiple year grant from the Massachusetts Office of Refugees and Immigrants. Since 1993, more than 300 refugee immigrant leaders in the Merrimack Valley received training in educational leadership, political leadership, economic development, and women's leadership. 
 
CIRCLE Lowell currently carries out a Refugee and Immigrant Self-Sufficiency Project, funded through the MassJobs Council for $100,000. The goals of this effort are to improve economic opportunities and increase the economic influence of the immigrant community over the local economy. The project provides comprehensive instruction and skills development. The project provides on-going technical assistance and helps community leaders design, identify funding for, and implement community economic development projects. Current projects include the development of a Laotian self-help and mutual assistance organization, the creation of a Latino media project, and the creation of an Asian American Business Association.

Environmental Justice Program

Environmental Justice concerns itself with families living in poor communities and communities of color who are more likely to experience pollution, hazardous waste, dirty industries, toxic releases, and contaminated air, water and soil. Those committed to environmental justice work to reduce the disproportional risk faced by families living in urban areas.

The Southeast Asian Environmental Justice Partnership, funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, is a collaboration among Cambodian and Laotian communities, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and health care providers in the city of Lowell. The goal of this program is to increase awareness of environmental and cultural issues in urban environmental areas such as Lowell. Specific Aims of the Project:

1.To increase the community's awareness of basic environmental health concepts, issues, and resources and to make sure that the community is able to access those resources in culturally acceptable ways.

2.To make sure that the community has an ongoing, institutionalized role in identifying and defining problems and risks related to environmental exposures.

3.To set up a forum that enables the community to actively participate with researchers and health care providers in developing responses and setting priorities for intervention strategies.

4.To make sure that primary health care providers are aware of the environmental risk and concerns of community residents (such as living in houses with lead paint or working in hazardous industries) and that these providers routinely include environmental and occupational health questions as a part of their in take with patients.

5.To make sure that environmental health scientists are aware of the cultural and lifestyles factors (such as high levels of eating locally caught fish) that shape concerns about risk and that environmental scientist design questions, research, and intervention in ways that reflect culture.

6.To create sustainable environmental justice communication plan that will continue beyond the grant because it is integrate into the ongoing activities of the temple, mutual assistance associations, primary health care associations, schools, the university, and city and state governments.

7.To demonstrate how environmental justice training can be leveraged at the community level by linking the planned training and resources work to other partnership programs.

8.To continue to build strong links for community responses to environmental and occupational problems through equitable partnerships among the university, health care providers, and the community.

9.To show the importance of linking environmental and occupational concerns at the community level, and to demonstrate effective ways to link the two.

10.To demonstrate the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to environmental justice, bringing together strengths in the university and the community in occupational and environmental health, culturally appropriate health care, toxic use reduction and pollution prevention, and participatory education.

Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC)

The Community Outreach Partnership Center is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through its Community-University Partnership Program. Drs. Forrant and Silka from RESD are the Co-Directors of this Program that involves faculty and graduate students from throughout the university in developing research and application partnerships with the community. Among the projects carried out under COPC have been the University in the City Scholars program, the University in the Neighborhoods, Community Request for Partnerships, Community Technical Assistance, and the development of the Family College. Faculty and graduate students from Education, Engineering, English, Health, Management, Psychology, RESD, and Work Environment have been important partners in COPC. The faculty and graduate students have carried out a variety of surveys and research projects in collaboration with organizations and firms in the community. These include surveys of work skills being sought by Enterprise Community employers, an Access to Jobs survey, a survey of first and second generation refugee and immigrant business owners, and surveys of women who own their own businesses.

Geographic Information Systems

The Center for Family, Work & Community has been instrumental in using alternative approaches to stimulate community awareness, involvement, and action. Community Mapping through GIS is one such approach. Maps and graphs can visually present complex information in a well understood format, enabling groups with language and cultural barriers to easily understand the information presented.

Current Projects include training youth environmentalists to use GIS, carrying out GIS capacity building with refugee and immigrant leaders, working with the Crime Analysis Unit of the Lowell Police Department and the Lowell Public Schools to analyze programs and identify problems areas and successes, employing GIS in program evaluation to evaluate program coverage and impact, and the development of an online Tutorial. The Centerís GIS web site provides additional information about ways that we are using GIS for research and application (see, for example, descriptions of) four ways that GIS can be useful to community research, and also Community GIS links on the Internet).

Grant Writing

I teach graduate courses in grant writing and involve graduate students in learning grant writing skills. At the Center for Family, Work, and Community, we have completed over $3 million in successful grant writing for our partners on community economic development, community policing, and community environmental training. We have received grants from Housing and Urban Development, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, National Institute of Environmental Health Science, State Justice Institute, Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Governor's Alliance Against Drugs, and Council for Pluralism and Diversity.

Graduate students are important to the grant writing we do at the Center for Family, Work, and Community. Students have many opportunities to learn grant writing, provide technical assistance to community groups and organizations that are engaged in grant writing, and create products and processes that assist underserved groups to learn the funding process. Graduate students recently created an online guide "Community Grant Writing Tip Guide" that is now being wide used and includes the following topics

A Grant Writing Overview

-How to Search for a Grant on the Internet
-How to Read a "Request for Proposal"
-Tricks To Doing a Great One Page Concept Paper
-Getting from the Concept Paper to Proposal
-Succeeding at Grant Writing by Doing Thorough Background Research
-The People Chase: Networking for Grant Support
-Networking with People to Write a Stronger Proposal
-From Idea to Program: Strategic Planning
-Enhancing Your Proposal with a Strong Program Evaluation Plan
-Creating the Budget and Timeline

Recent Publications

"Thinking and Doing, Doing and Thinking: the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the Community Development Process," with Robert Forrant. American Behavioral Scientist, 42, February 1999.