Community Planning and Research

Community participation is crucial to all of Isles' community development and environmental work because it broadens and deepens the impact of its work. The Community Planning and Research Department facilitates community involvement by helping residents organize, identify and address immediate needs and build their capacity to meet long-term challenges without Isles’ assistance. Isles works with communities to research, advocate and organize strategies that foster sustainable, equitable development in both local and regional communities.

Initiatives include:

Participatory Planning, Community Education and Organizing
Isles works with community members to identify community needs and interests, and encourages residents to participate in local planning in order to have their needs met, enhance their quality of life, and build on the existing physical and social assets of their neighborhoods.

Regional Policy Planning
Isles' regional program is tracking the socioeconomic disparities in New Jersey and is involved in an educational and organizing campaign to foster sustainable growth in New Jersey's urban centers and surrounding suburbs.

Parents Empowering Parents (PEP) Program
Isles established PEP to build healthy families and communities by building the capacity of individual parents. Isles works to create support groups that help parents develop the skills needed for healthy parent-child interaction and that prepare them for more active participation in their children's education and well-being. The program provides a forum that encourages healthy parenting practices, creates strong peer support groups and connects parents to services and resources at Isles and in the community.

Community Action Research and Design Center (CARD)
The CARD Center will build Isles’ and other community nonprofits’ capacities to strengthen their research efforts, collect information to guide their management decisions (as if impact mattered), partner with researchers to coordinate and track indicators and trends of community and regional concerns. Key issues are health, housing, employment and education.

In 2007, Isles developed partnerships with academics from Princeton University, Rutgers University and The College of New Jersey to document and quantify the impact of Isles’ work in the greater Trenton area. This enables Isles to discover where its work is effective and which efforts need to be adapted.