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Capacity Building, Technical Assistance, and Consultation
The Community Building Institute provides support for organizational
initiatives and community collaboratives in ways that respect the wealth of
wisdom and insights with whom we work. These technical assistance activities can
range from training, coaching, and design work to fostering peer-to-peer
exchanges. While our focus in providing technical assistance is on building
capacity -- helping others design and implement collaborative projects and
programs -- we also provide consulting services in which CBI plays a more active
role in program design and implementation.
Why Choose CBI?
CBI brings, above all, a clear sense of good collaborative process and robust
strategies for community change. While some collaborative efforts fail for a
lack of good ideas, most flounder around challenges such as turf, lack of
consensus, and conflict and often fail to move forward for lack of experience
and skill in collaboration, facilitative leadership, and change management. We
recognize that community work is always conducted in constant presence of issues
of race, class, gender, ethnicity, and culture. CBI's skills can help address
issues of diversity and conflict. Further, we recognize that all collaborative
efforts are embedded in a larger system encompassing economic, political,
governmental, and social elements and addressing those systemic issues are a
part of long term change agenda. Finally, we believe technical assistance must
serve the community’s agenda as well as the needs of the funder.
With Whom Have We Worked?
Among the initiatives that CBI's President has worked
with are:
State of Maryland Systems Reform Initiative for Children, Youth and Families
 | Since 1997, Potapchuk has worked with the
Maryland’s Office of Children Youth and Families and their local partners in a
variety of capacities. Potapchuk helped develop negotiating protocols, provided
negotiation and collaboration training for state and local teams, and has
conducted an assessment of the technical assistance needs of Local Management
Boards, and helped develop a statewide technical assistance plan. |
Together We Can
| From 1992 until 1999, Potapchuk was a partner in the
collaborative initiative Together We Can (TWC) with the Institute for
Educational Leadership (IEL), California Tomorrow and the Child and Family
Policy Center. Funded by the Kauffman and Annie E. Casey Foundations, TWC is
a national leadership development and capacity building initiative to
strengthen services for children, youth, families, and communities. TWC has
provides a range of technical assistance to collaboratives around the
country engaged in systems reform efforts for children, youth and families.
TWC has has provided technical assistance to North Carolina Smart Start
grantees, multi-purpose collaborative bodies in Michigan, technical
assistance staff of the Pennsylvania Center for Schools and Communities, and
Lifeline grantees of the San Francisco Community Foundation, among others. |
The Annie E. Casey Foundation
| Potapchuk provided technical assistance to the
Community Building Initiative in Portland, Oregon as a part of a larger body
of work with the Foundation. In Portland, Potapchuk's efforts focused on
building neighborhood capacity. |
Safe Kids/Safe Streets
| Potapchuk provides technical assistance on systems
reform for the Safe Kids/Safe Streets effort in Toledo, Ohio. This effort,
which is focused on reducing child sexual abuse, includes the development of
a prevention agenda, supporting a multi-disciplinary team, and working with
an early childhood initiative. |
City of Hampton, Virginia
| Potapchuk provided strategic consulting
the Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative in Hampton, Virginia, a comprehensive
effort to achieve better outcomes in neighborhoods. He also helped facilitate an
effort to reinvent Hampton’s Neighborhood Commission. |
U.S. Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Services
| Potapchuk was project director for a ten
site technical assistance initiative for the US Department of Agriculture's Food
and Nutrition Service Community Nutrition Education Consortium. The technical
assistance focused on collaboration and consortium development to 10 sites
ranging from Seattle to Harlem. This work helped the sites develop comprehensive
public, private and community collaborative efforts to deliver nutrition
education programs for families eligible for one or more food assistance
programs. |
Healthy Start
| Spanning work at 15 different sites,
Potapchuk was project director for an effort which provided technical assistance
to collaborative efforts that unite private, public, and community organizations
to dramatically reduce infant mortality. This work has included conducting an
assessment of the technical assistance needs for collaboration and consortium
building at 15 sites and presenting three technical assistance roundtables for
teams from each site. |
National Institute for Dispute Resolution
| Potapchuk served as project director for an effort to
assist four community mediation centers who had received innovation grants
to broaden their efforts in the public policy arena. Potapchuk and his
colleagues conducted training, coached lead staff, provided phone
assistance, and identified resource materials for the sites. |
If you would like to speak to our past clients about the
quality of our work, we would be glad to provide contact information.
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