Westside Communities Alliance

A partnership between Atlanta's westside communities and institutions of higher education.

OurGirls @ Tech 2017

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Last month, 45 female students from Brown Middle School attended a STEM campus experience at Georgia Tech for the WCA’s annual OurGirls @ Tech event. Given Atlanta Public School’s new direction towards STEM and STEAM, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts aims to create opportunities for exposure to local colleges and universities. While Brown Middle School is only a 12 minute bus drive away, many students are unfamiliar with Georgia Tech and all of its offerings.

This year, the girls attended demonstrations led by an all-female crew of students and staff. They stopped by the Clough Undergraduate Learning Center (CULC) to see the Urban Honey Bee Project led by Dr. Jennifer Leavey. The Technology Group visited the retroTECH to play with vintage computers, video games, and more. The Women in Electrical and Computing Engineering (WECE) demonstrated how to build a wind turbine out of everyday objects. Across campus. The Mathematics group learned how to code their own music songs using rhythm and beats with EarSketch.

Brown MS students learn how to code and create their own music with Georgia Tech’s EarSketch program

 

The photo scavenger hunt took them to the water slide in the recreation center, a dining hall, the bowling alley, and several popular student hang-out spots on campus.

Catered lunch took place overlooking Historic Grant Field at Bobby Dodd Stadium in the Student Success Center, while the Dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts spoke about the importance of their presence on campus. Jade Sims, from the Office of Admissions, used the GPA game to stress the importance of grades, extracurricular activities, and tailored admissions essays when applying to college. Current female student athletes talked about an appropriate study-life balances, camaraderie, and the diversity of scholarships at Tech.

45 Brown MS attend OurGirls @ Tech in 2017

WCA’s 2016 Westside Snapshot

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The 2016 Westside_Snapshot was created by WCA Data Dashboard Project Manager using the Data Dashboard. It provides an overview of important demographics and statistics comparing the Westside (NPUs K, L, and T) to the City of Atlanta. The Westside Snapshot was released at the WCA’s Five Year Anniversary Community Development Symposium.

Through this document, we seek to continue to make data more accessible and understandable, by physically putting qualitative information into people’s hands. 

All NPUs were invited to review and comment on the snapshot before we released the document. We will continue to collect data and update the document as new data sets are released or community suggestions are made.

Westside Innovation Lab

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Last week, WCA staff attended the launch of the Westside Innovation Lab at the Center for Civic Innovation. The application submission is now live! CCI is looking for people and organizations with innovative ideas to address social challenges in their own neighborhoods on the westside of Atlanta. Applications are due on April 25, 2016. Please consider applying or passing this on to someone, or an organization, you know that may be a good fit. Winning submissions will be chosen BY THE COMMUNITY. Those winning ideas (6-8) will receive seed funding and technical assistance in their entrepreneurial endeavors.

Submit your idea now! http://www.civicatlanta.org/westside-idea-submmision

If you are interested in volunteering time or skills: http://www.civicatlanta.org/westside-volunteer

 

CCI has hired two new program managers that will be focused on this initiative full-time: Raina Turner and Nathan Jones.  Reach out to them at westside@civicatlanta.org

Google’s Community Leaders Program

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Are you a current college student (junior or senior) in Atlanta interested in helping local community organizations and non-profits with their digital presence? Then, check out Google’s Community Leaders Program!  At a high level, CLP is focused on creating a sustainable web ecosystem and increasing digital literacy by connecting communities, businesses, entrepreneurs, and nonprofits with local student talent. We’d like to partner with Georgia Tech to select potential students for participation in the 2016 – 2017 CLP year. Below is an overview of the program, but I’d love to set up more time to discuss the opportunity further.

 

Program Overview


CLP started four years ago in New Orleans, LA, and has since expanded to several cities, including Kansas City, MO, Harlem, NY, and Provo, UT.

The program divides students from local universities into small groups of three or four. Each small group is then paired with a local nonprofit, small business, or community organization.

The program is one year long (beginning in spring 2016), and students are expected to devote 10 hours per week to it, the majority of which are spent working on a project with their peers and partner organization. Traditionally, these partner organizations have evaluated the students’ work performance extremely positively, thereby strengthening their relationships with and perceptions of the students’ schools.

Outside the project mentioned above, a key objective of the program is to provide students with opportunities for professional development, including resume workshops, job application assistance, and mentoring from Google employees. Students develop real-world skills they might not acquire in the classroom—they network with community and business leaders, create portfolios of their projects, and learn to work in teams.

Upon completion of the program, students are highly encouraged to apply for full-time or internship positions at Google. (Please note: While CLP itself is not considered a Google internship, we highly encourage universities to offer course credit for participation.)

 

WCA Launches Data Dashboard

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The Westside Communities Alliance introduced a comprehensive interactive Data Dashboard for Atlanta on February 11th.

The WCA Data Dashboard serves as a one-stop shop for key data that is accessible to community stakeholders, researchers, local government agencies, and relevant foundations interested in sustainable Westside community development.

“We believe that this tool has the potential to encourage greater data-driven decision-making at the neighborhood and Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU) level in addition to supporting research and policymaking that addresses significant challenges in areas of education, economic development, transit and mobility, and public safety,” said WCA Associate Director Mackenzie Madden.

In its current form, the dashboard offers resources in seven categories:  1) Community Profiles, 2) Economic Development, 3) Education, 4) Public Safety, 5) All Data, 6) Historical Data, and 7) Resource Library.

Presently, the dashboard displays information for NPU’s K, L, and T – the three NPUs connected to the WCA – as compared to the City of Atlanta.

The dashboard is a user-friendly tool that:  1) draws upon available quantitative and qualitative data, 2) stores data collected for current and future research initiatives, 3) provides metrics for assessing the success of diverse engagement and intervention models, and 4) develops comprehensive reports to identify the impact of “anchor institutions” such as Georgia Tech on neighboring communities to highlight knowledge gaps.

The Data Dashboard project began in 2011 as a static Westside neighborhoods asset map created in conjunction with faculty in the Georgia Tech College of Architecture. Under the leadership of Dean Royster and her WCA leadership team, the first virtual tool was created in Fall 2013 by a group of graduate students in Dr. John Stasko’s Data Visualization class. That iteration mapped transit and walkability in the city. The platform also provided a heat map of census data that has since been transformed into the Big Data tool available today. Graduate Research Assistants in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts continued building the dashboard into its present form.

Katie O’Connell, MCRP 2015, was hired as the Project Manager for the Data Dashboard in Summer 2014. She began by researching similar platforms across the country and collecting relevant data for the city of Atlanta. During an Online Tools session of the WCA’s 2014 Community Studio, O’Connell was able to determine the basic pros and cons of existing resources such as the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Neighborhood Nexus, the U.S. EPA’s Enviromapper, and the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Several focus groups with Westside residents and stakeholders were held as various portals were designed to garner feedback on the usability of the dashboard.

The WCA staff has presented the dashboard at various conferences and symposia including The Center for Community Progress’ Vacant Properties Conference in 2015, Atlanta Studies Symposium, TEDx Atlanta, and the Georgia Tech Center for Urban Innovation.

The WCA Data Dashboard has been made possible through various stages of development in collaboration with entities at Georgia Tech including College of Architecture, College of Computing, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the Center for Geographic Information Systems, and with funding from the Ford Foundation.

Please visit wcadatadashboard.iac.gatech.edu to explore the platform. Please use the hashtag #WCADataDashboard in social media settings, when referencing the tool.