Category Archives: cross-sector

Reforestation of Parks in Seattle

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This four-page case study (2014) from The Intersector Project outlines how the City of Seattle used cross-sector collaboration to establish the Green Seattle Partnership to  help reforest the city parks in Seattle, Washington.

From the Intersector Project

In 1994 the City of Seattle and the Parks Department began to notice something wrong with trees in city parks. Research found that Seattle’s 2,500 acres of forested city parks were at risk from invasive plants such as English Ivy, Himalayan blackberry and bindweed. In 2004, experts projected that within 20 years about 70 percent of Seattle’s forested parkland trees would be dead. Previously, park-goers removed invasive species on their own, while non-profit and government organizations likewise worked independently. Rather than helping the problem, however, these piecemeal efforts placed an undue strain on the city’s existing resources. In order to save the parks, a shared effort between community members, experts in forestry, and the departments that held park resources was necessary. In 2004, the Green Seattle Partnership was formed, with the aim of arming citizens to help the city’s trees in partnership with the Department of Parks, Public Utilities and the Office of Sustainability and Environment. Under the leadership of Mark Mead, Senior Urban Forester, the Partnership created a 20-year strategic plan to sustain Seattle’s forested parks. Green Seattle Partnership is now the largest urban forest restoration project in the country. Mark’s use of agents across all sectors connected to the issue, and mobilizing community members to volunteer 500,000 hours by 2013 to the reforestation program, have put the Green Seattle Partnership in place to achieve their goal of planting 500,000 new trees by 2025.

IP_Seattle

“What really energized me and brought me into the fold of doing this work was in the very early days…working with the community members, seeing their enthusiasm, their drive, and their commitment to making their community a better place.”– Mark Mead, Senior Urban Forester

This case study, authored by The Intersector Project, tells the story of this initiative.

More about The Intersector ProjectThe Intersector Project
The Intersector Project is a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the government, business, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. We provide free, publicly available resources for practitioners from every sector to implement collaborative solutions to complex problems. We take forward several years of research in collaborative governance done at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and expand on that research to create practical, accessible resources for practitioners.

Follow on Twitter @theintersector.

Resource Link: http://intersector.com/case/greenseattle_washington/ (Download the case study here.)

This resource was submitted by Neil Britto, the Executive Director at The Intersector Project via the Add-a-Resource form.

Creating an Environment for Healthy Lifestyles in Brownsville

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This four-page case study (2014) from The Intersector Project outlines how the University of Texas School of Public Health used cross-sector collaboration with local clinicians and the City Health Department to create opportunities for healthier lifestyles in Brownsville, Texas.

From the Intersector Project

In 2001, the University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH) Brownsville campus began clinical research to identify and quantify what health risks existed in Brownsville. They found 80 percent of residents were either obese or overweight, one in three were diabetic (50 percent unknowingly), and 70 percent of residents had no healthcare coverage. After initiating a community media campaign called Tu Salud Si Cuenta, UTSPH formed a Community Advisory Board (CAB) in order to speak about the findings and promote change in the Brownsville community. They involved local clinicians, including Dr. Rose Zavaletta Gowen, an Obstetrician Gynecologist, to inform clinicians and encourage them to get involved. After agreeing actions needed to be taken, a team of UTSPH, the City Health Department, a local community health clinic Su Clinica, and Rose organized and designed a farmers’ market, with the goal of making fresh fruits and vegetables accessible and affordable to every income level in the city. The Brownsville Farmers’ Market opened in 2006 followed by an integrated network of initiatives including The Challenge, an annual weight loss event; CycloBia, an open streets program; policy changes including Sidewalk ordinance, Safe Passing ordinance, Complete Streets Resolution, and Smoking ban ordinance; and a Master Bike and Hike Plan aimed at providing a trail within one half mile of every residence in the city. The CAB, which today includes over 200 members, is actively involved in all of these programs in a variety of capacities to promote a healthier Brownsville.

IP_Brownsville“For cross-sector collaboration you might need to talk in terms that you’re not necessarily familiar with, but you have to do your research in order to find those connections to other areas and harness those partners. That is how we were able to make our projects work with very little funding and no line item in the city budget for what we were doing.”— Dr. Rose Zavaletta Gowen, Brownsville City Commissioner

This case study, authored by The Intersector Project, tells the story of this initiative.

More about The Intersector ProjectThe Intersector Project
The Intersector Project is a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the government, business, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. We provide free, publicly available resources for practitioners from every sector to implement collaborative solutions to complex problems. We take forward several years of research in collaborative governance done at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and expand on that research to create practical, accessible resources for practitioners.

Follow on Twitter: @theintersector.

Resource Link: http://intersector.com/case/health_brownsville/ (Download the case study PDF here.)

This resource was submitted by Neil Britto, the Executive Director at The Intersector Project via the Add-a-Resource form.

Intersector Toolkit: Tools for Cross-Sector Collaboration

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This 31-page Toolkit (2014) is the cornerstone of The Intersector Project’s work. It provides practical knowledge for practitioners in every sector to implement their own intersector initiatives. At The Intersector Project, we think of a toolkit as a resource that provides actionable guidance on how to solve a problem. Toolkits can be broad or narrow in focus, providing general guidance or sector-, industry-, or issue- specific guidance.

The Intersector Project_ToolkitIn a cross-sector context, toolkits assist practitioners in navigating the differences in languages, cultures, and work practices that exist across sectors, differences that can prove challenging to align when pursuing shared goals in a consensus-oriented environment. Our Toolkit is designed to be process-specific, rather than issue- or sector-specific because we believe there are common elements to all successful cross-sector collaborations and because we want to ensure that our Toolkit is accessible to practitioners working on a broad range of problems in varying types of collaborations.

Our Toolkit is composed of 17 tools organized into four stages of Diagnosis, Design, Implementation, and Assessment. It has been crafted as a flexible handbook that guides practitioners’ thinking on when and how to implement a specific tool, regardless of the practitioners’ sector affiliations. Each tool describes an action that practitioners can take together to help forge successful collaborations. These tools are not static. We encourage practitioners to select the tools that are most appropriate for their project stage and partnership structure, and to use them repeatedly at different stages when needed.

To date, this resource is informed by our library of case studies and correlating leadership interviews, literature reviews that address the theories and practices that characterize cross-sector collaboration, and in-depth analysis of similar guiding resources in the fields of collective impact, public-private partnerships, and other collaborative frameworks.

We consider this Toolkit a living document, which we are continually improving based on practitioner feedback. If you have suggestions on how to further enhance this resource, please share them with us at research[at]intersector[dot]com.

More about The Intersector ProjectThe Intersector Project
The Intersector Project is a New York-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the government, business, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. We provide free, publicly available resources for practitioners from every sector to implement collaborative solutions to complex problems. We take forward several years of research in collaborative governance done at the Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School and expand on that research to create practical, accessible resources for practitioners. Follow on Twitter @theintersector.

Resource Link: http://intersector.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Intersector-Project-Toolkit.pdf

This resource was submitted by Neil Britto, the Executive Director at The Intersector Project via the Add-a-Resource form.