We are kicking off 2025 with apprehension about the uncertainties ahead, and at the same time, excitement about the change we hope to make toward strong and just communities and systems. With this aspiration, we are doubling down on three important pillars that have always been part of our founding and history — community, systems, and justice. Here’s why and how we operationalize each pillar and combine them to form our approach.

Community.

Decades of research have shown how being part of a community can help preserve one’s health and well-being, from Sarason (1974) to more recent publications such as Steward & Townley (2020) and Spezia, De Rosis, and Nitu (2024). My colleague David Chavis and I wrote that community is about people, it’s not a place, a building, an organization, or exchanges over the Internet (Chavis & Lee, 2015). It is both a feeling and a set of relationships based on shared history, shared identity, caring for one another, belonging, and fulfillment of one’s needs, as described in McMillian and Chavis (1986). In the last four years, building and sustaining community has become increasingly critical as our nation grapples with events and circumstances that have affected our mental and physical health. These include George Floyd’s murder and other incidents of law enforcement’s harsh treatment of young men and women of color, the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters that have wiped out whole neighborhoods and cities, and growing polarization due to differing views about matters such as immigration, DEI strategies and wokeness, and abortion.

A few noteworthy characteristics of community

  • People can be part of more than one community because they share different histories and identities with different groups of people, or they have to fulfill their needs by participating multiple communities.
  • Communities can be found within communities because a set of relationships can exist within a broader set of relationships.
  • Some of these nested communities are formalized through governing processes and physical representation while others are informal.

Systems

A system is a set of connected parts. At Community Science, we work in systems made up of policies, programs, practices, narratives, and formal and informal relationships that operate in concert to fulfill a function (e.g., deliver health care, educate children, provide housing). When a system is dysfunctional, it is not working in concert or fulfilling its function for certain groups of people or in certain places (Meadows, 2008). A systems approach ensures that we understand and deal with problems experienced by communities in a holistic way, focus on patterns of behavior and connections and individual events, and generate sustainable solutions (Ghosh, 2017). More importantly, we have to be attentive to how these patterns affect and are experienced by people who face multiple types of biases because they’re part of different communities characterized by more than one distinguishing factor (e.g., Black women, migrant farmworkers with limited English proficiency, Indigenous youth who identify as queer, low-income White women living in rural places) (Dill & Zambrana, 2009). Community Science, with support from W.K. Kellogg Foundation, developed the idea of a “systems tree” to guide evaluators, strategists, and program implementers to apply systems thinking (see Doing Evaluation in Service of Equity Practice Guide on Diagnosing Biases and Systems).

The people who direct and operate systems must know how to reach and respond to the communities they serve and as such, need to understand and tap into the relationships that make up a community. Community Science developed a way for this by methodically identifying formal and informal networks of relationships that are grounded in people’s history, culture, and circumstances. Hence, community and systems are inseparable pillars for our work.

Justice

We believe that we have justice when people, regardless of their demographics and place of residence, have fair access to opportunities and resources that enable them to reach their full potential; the capacities, conditions, and rights to take advantage of the opportunities and resources without discrimination by the law; and are treated with dignity and respect by those who provide the opportunities and resources. In other words, the policies, programs, practices, and formal and informal relationships that operate in concert to fulfill a function — that is, the system — should always ensure that fairness and justice are being practiced and upheld, and as mentioned, understand and treat people holistically (Dill & Zambrana, 2009). This is especially so for communities that are underserved, disadvantaged, and excluded due to their histories, identities, places of residence, and other distinguishing characteristics.

Community. Systems. Justice.

These three pillars form the scaffold for how we think about our evaluation, research, strategy development, and capacity building work. We then strengthen the scaffold with our expertise about specific subjects, such as how to support youth in their career pathways, engage residents in identifying and advocating for a change, promote the availability and accessibility of healthy and fresh food for people who live in rural areas, deal with gentrification and displacement, and bridge social connections between people with perceived and real differences.

Descriptions of how we integrate these pillars into our work are included in this newsletter. Examples include the evaluations of The Colorado Trust’s Building and Bridging Power Initiative and Wend’s Thriving Youth Initiative.

We are entering into a period of uncertainty amidst increasing polarization, conflict, and natural disasters here in the United States and globally. We’re also surrounded by people who continue to experience pain and trauma due to a variety of circumstances. At Community Science, we are committed to bringing our unique approaches and set of competencies to contribute to making positive change for all, especially for those fighting bias, discrimination, and injustice.

References

Chavis, D. & Lee, K. (2015, May 12). What is Community Anyway? Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://doi.org/10.48558/EJJ2-JJ82

Dill, B.T. & Zambrana, R.E. (Eds.) (2009). Emerging Intersections: Race, Class, and Gender in Theory, Policy, and Practice. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Ghosh, A. (2017). Dynamic Systems for Everyone: Understanding How Our World Works (2nd Ed.). Springer International.

McMillan, D. & Chavis, D. (1986). Sense of community: A definition and theory. Journal of Community Psychology. 14(1):6–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/1520-6629(198601)14:1%3C6::AID-JCOP2290140103%3E3.0.CO;2-I.

Meadows, D. (2008). Thinking in Systems.

Sarason, S. (1974). Psychological Sense of Community: Prospects for a Community Psychology. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publications.

About The Author

Kien S. Lee, Ph.D., President, has expertise in promoting equity, inclusion, and cultural competency for health, food security, civic engagement, and leadership development. Current evaluations include those with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, the Colorado Trust, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.