Nexus Community Partners

Nexus Community Partners (Nexus) works to build more engaged and powerful communities of color by supporting community-building initiatives that expand community wealth and foster social and human capital. Throughout their 15-year history, Nexus understands that the key to building more engaged and powerful communities of color lies in the interconnectedness between authorship, leadership, and ownership. This award supports the continued engagement of Nexus as a technical assistance provider in the Safety and Justice Challenge, the Foundation’s criminal justice reform initiative aimed at reducing over-incarceration by focusing on the misuse and overuse of jails and racial and ethnic disparities. In addition to working with the Foundation and other partners on the overall planning and coordination of initiative activities, Nexus will continue to build the capacity of Challenge Network jurisdictions to adopt, implement, and sustain inclusive, equity-driven community engagement practices in collaboration with system stakeholders to support jail and disparity reduction strategies in local justice systems.

Nexus Community Partners (Nexus) builds more engaged and powerful communities of color by supporting community building initiatives that expand community wealth and foster social and human capital. Since the launch of the Safety and Justice Challenge, the Foundation has encouraged jurisdictions participating in the Safety and Justice Challenge Network (the Network) to engage their communities in system reform efforts to safely reduce jail incarceration and address racial and ethnic disparities. A comprehensive analysis of the community engagement efforts of the Network identified the need to provide sites with additional guidance, resources, consultation, and training in evidence-based practices to implement successful community engagement activities. This award enables Nexus to provide training and technical assistance to support the Safety and Justice Challenge Network and work with targeted sites. Goals include building the capacity of sites to engage the community by providing direct assistance in their efforts to authentically engage local communities in the design and implementation of reform, building a network of practitioners working to increase their effectiveness, and capturing shared learning with other technical assistance providers.

Nexus Community Partners (Nexus) is committed to building more engaged and powerful communities of color by supporting community-building initiatives that expand community wealth and foster social and human capital. Since the launch of the Safety and Justice Challenge, the Foundation has encouraged jurisdictions participating in the Challenge Network to engage their communities in system reform efforts to safely reduce jail incarceration and address racial and ethnic disparities. A comprehensive analysis of the community engagement efforts of the Challenge Network sites identified a need to provide sites with additional guidance, resources, consultation, and training in evidence-based best practices to implement successful community engagement activities. This award supports a one-year planning process during which Nexus will participate in Challenge Network activities; educate Challenge Network sites about the principles of sustained and meaningful community engagement; and work with the Foundation and initiative partners to develop and organize a selection process by which a cohort of sites will receive supplemental support to implement comprehensive community engagement plans.