This toolkit is the culmination of STOP Administrator data collection, Action Meetings, and Site Visits led by Senior WOCN Consultants.
Overview
The WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit has 3 Sections listed below. We recommend for your first visit that you start with Section I and continue in number order. The first two sections provide the needed context for the toolkit, and provide crucial guidance in reflection, self-examination, and planning before implementation.
Purpose
We developed this toolkit to codify learnings and to support further STOP Administrator engagement with marginalized or “3-Tier populations”. We are happy to offer this online toolkit featuring the 3-Tier System with hopes that it will be a helpful vehicle to STOP Administrators and their local programs and grantees!
Staff
Aleese Moore-Orbih, Purvi Shah, and WOCN STOP TA Consultants Zoe Flowers and Smita Satiani, and WOCN staff Interim Executive Director Anzala Alozie.
Section I: Introducing WOCN’s 3-Tier System & Toolkit
WOCN, Inc. has worked in partnership with the Alliance of Local Service Organizations (ALSO) and the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) over the past several years to assist STOP Administrators in better identifying and reaching underserved populations.
The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) has mandated since 2005 that STOP Administrators include members of underserved populations in your state planning process, and that funding for organizations whose mission and purpose is to reach these communities is prioritized. WOCN was asked in 2009 to write an article for the STOP Administrators Corner periodical to provide clarity about including underserved populations in STOP planning.
In the article “Including Underserved, Un-Served and Inadequately Served Populations in the STOP Planning Process,” WOCN took the general term “underserved populations” and expanded it to three categories:
- Un-Served Populations: This category is designated for those populations who are so marginalized that they are not reached at all. This is also indicative of those populations who are emerging and who are not yet visible in our services or who are there in very small numbers.
- Underserved Populations: Populations in this category are those who are growing in number in our services and have minimal access but who need more services and approaches that meet their specific needs: therefore they remain ‘under’-served.
- Inadequately Served Populations: This category speaks to those historically marginalized communities who may be highly visible or even overrepresented in number, but who are still in need of improved quality of services that will help address cyclical challenges their populations face such as “one-size fits all” strategies that disregard historical barriers and culturally-specific experiences. Also, the fact that specific populations are “overrepresented” in services demonstrates a need for enhanced support to these communities.
WOCN was given the opportunity to then speak to STOP Administrators at a 2010 STOP Administrators Annual Meeting to further discuss and share this expanded approach to underserved populations initially explored in the 2009 article. Later that year, OVW funded WOCN to develop specialized programming and tools for STOP Administrators to assist in improving and enhancing your outreach to underserved populations. WOCN took the expanded approach shared in the 2009 article and coined it “The 3-Tier System” which has become the driving force behind WOCN’s TA to STOP Administrators. It has been lauded by the majority of STOP Administrators who have attended WOCN Action Meetings or who have invited WOCN to conduct onsite trainings within states and territories as an extremely useful system that has honed and enhanced the ongoing quest to better reach marginalized communities.
According to VAWA, reauthorized in 2013, “The term ‘underserved populations’ means populations who face barriers in accessing and using victim services, and includes populations underserved because of geographic location, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, underserved racial and ethnic populations, populations underserved because of special needs (such as language barriers, disabilities, alienage status, or age), and any other population determined to be underserved by the Attorney General or by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, as appropriate.” (42 U.S.C. 13925(a)(33)(as amended by P.L. 113-4, Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization of 2013)
The WOCN 3-Tier System is an expansion of the term “Underserved Populations” and breaks the definition down into three categories: (1) Un-served; (2) Underserved; and (3) Inadequately Served Populations.
Why a 3-Tier System?
The term “underserved” represents a wide spectrum of needs. Expanding and enhancing our understanding and approach to include the 3-Tier definitions (Un-served, Underserved, and Inadequately Served) enables us to specify historical or emerging systemic and societal or community-based barriers – and then respond more precisely to these needs and barriers with effective services and advocacy.
What is the Purpose of the WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit?
The purpose of the WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit is to assist STOP Administrators (SAs) in identifying and reaching marginalized populations within your states and territories. Use of the Toolkit concepts, approaches and resources will also help SAs in fully complying with the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) requirements and supporting equitable services and outreach for the full spectrum of survivors. Through WOCN’s work with STOP Administrators, including through Action Meetings, Site Visits, Technical Assistance (TA), and this 3-Tier System Toolkit, we are striving to enhance STOP Administrator identification processes, relationship-building TA provisions, and funding to 3-Tier System populations.
What is the Impact of Using the 3-Tier System?
The process of increasing and improving the collaborative and funding partnerships between STOP Administrators and CBOs serving culturally-specific communities will greatly increase capacity to comply with VAWA, which requires 10% of the victim services money in the STOP formula be distributed to culturally-specific community-based organizations providing services that specifically work to end violence against women and families.
Furthermore, the 3-Tier System framework enables us to distinguish specific needs across populations in order to more effectively shape service and advocacy strategies and responses. In particular, this approach offers a closer attention to demographics, the needs of small and emerging populations, and ways to form and sustain direct productive partnerships to ensure community connections and respond to the varied needs of diverse populations. While the work of distinguishing underserved populations is not easy, the 3-Tier System is essential to avoid a “one-size-fits-all” approach to reaching all survivors.
Knowing that STOP Administrators are the experts in your day-to-day work, we began our TA by compiling information on what Administrators know, believe, and seek to enhance in serving un-served, underserved, and inadequately served populations (the 3-Tier System populations). Through an online survey and listening sessions, we tapped a rich fount of information.
We thank each of you who participated in these sessions. An overview of key findings related to challenges and promising practices from your expertise is offered below and in the STOP Administrator WOCN Data Summary. Working together in this way, we can embolden the whole field.
Survey Results
In November 2011, WOCN – in partnership with Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) – launched a joint online anonymous survey for all STOP Administrators. The purpose of the survey was to gather first-hand information on your needs in developing best practices and barriers in providing assistance to un-served, underserved, and inadequately served survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking.
Twenty-four respondents participated in the online survey, meaning that about half of the states and/or territories were likely represented. The surveys uncovered key findings on challenges and successful promising practices including those listed below. Furthermore, we conducted individualized Listening Sessions with STOP Administrators, who offered deeper examinations of and solutions to these issues as provided in the next section.
Survey Data: Promising Practices
Successful STOP Administrator methods and promising practices for reaching underserved populations included:
- -Focusing on long-range planning & relationship-building with CBOs;
- -Participation in Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Native Coalition meetings and task forces;
- -Providing proposal and grant-writing workshops to CBOs.
Survey Data: Barriers/Challenges
STOP Administrators identified a number of core barriers and challenges in reaching and supporting 3-Tier populations. In particular, the following challenges were noted:
- -Lack of sufficient time, resources, and funding;
- -The capacities of the community-based organizations (CBOs) serving underserved populations, including factors such as lack of staff, limited resources, and recent entry into the non-profit and/or anti-violence against women community;
- -Despite a stronger ability to gather input from underserved populations through conversations and outreach, there is a gap in representation of underserved population community members and CBOs on planning committees, agency staff, and as core partners
- -A gap between provision of TA and a desired outcome for strong proposals and awarding funding to community-based organizations.
Listening Session Results
In the summer of 2012, WOCN consultants collected individualized feedback from 17 STOP Administrators from across the nation via Listening Sessions. As with the survey, the purpose of the listening sessions was to afford STOP Administrators the opportunity to elaborate on promising practices and lessons learned, assess barriers, and share feasible steps to effectively include 3-Tier populations in the STOP planning, funding, and implementation process.
Specifically, WOCN mined tips and practices for building networks with community-based organizations, enhancing reach in underserved communities, and responding to the needs of emerging populations.
Listening Session Data: Promising Practices
Successful STOP Administrator methods for problem-solving and increasing the number of proposals from community-based organizations serving underserved populations included:
- -Placing priority on service, representation, and partnerships with 3-Tier communities;
- -Inviting groups representing 3-Tier populations to the table to meet with collaborative team members across the state;
- -Offering trainings on inclusion of sexual assault services in the work of CBOs;
- -Discussing grant opportunities and the involvement of CBOs representing 3-Tier populations in the grant planning process;
- -Wide and consistent outreach and RFP dispersal among CBOs in such arenas as bidders’ conferences; and
- -Gathering input from board members representing agencies who work closely with CBOs.
Listening Session Data: Barriers/Challenges
STOP Administrators identified a number of core challenges in reaching and supporting un-served, underserved, and inadequately served communities. In particular, the following gaps in the field and challenges were noted:
- Legislative pushback in supporting specific communities such as undocumented survivors;
- Lack of community-based organizations (CBOs) to reach and serve 3-Tier populations or a high rate of staff turnover in existing CBOs;
- Lack of transportation or services due to geography or accessibility and other logistical issues making it difficult for 3-Tier populations to have equal access across the State or Territory; and
- Need for more spaces among STOP Administrators for information sharing on promising practices and successful methods for problem-solving these challenges.
Download the Data Summary
The 3-Tier System Toolkit is intended to help SAs improve your outreach and address the needs of 3-Tier populations in areas such as:
- -The STOP Planning and Implementation Process;
- -Development of Priorities and Approaches to better reach 3-Tier populations; and
- -Reshaping of Grant-making Strategies to increase access to funding for those Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) that directly serve these communities.
The approach introduced in the 3-Tier System Toolkit is very useful when considering decision-making in a strategic planning process. We highly recommend using the 3-Tier System Toolkit in relation to priority-setting activities, but you will also see other suggested applications.
In particular, through the implementation of the concrete strategies and promising practices offered in the Toolkit, SAs can improve and increase sustainable and effective partnerships with CBOs serving all marginalized populations. The WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit will enhance the capacity of SAs to identify, outreach and resource CBOs serving 3-Tier populations and include CBOs and 3-Tier populations in the STOP planning and implementation process which will better prepare these groups to access, participate, qualify for and receive OVW program funding.
How Do I Use the WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit?
There are no specific rules about using the WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit. All content is available to be used in any way needed. However, WOCN requests that SAs reference the sources when duplicating, reproducing, or circulating any Toolkit materials. We hope that this Toolkit enables STOP Administrators and the programs in your State or Territory to reach more survivors and deliver vital, relevant, accessible, and respectful support needed across marginalized communities.
In What Ways Can I Use the WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit?
Depending on your State or Territory context, you can use the WOCN 3-Tier System Toolkit in various ways by incorporating appropriate elements into your Federal and State funding processes. You can:
- -Develop or adapt supportive policies, practices, and programs;
- -Enhance staff training by utilizing the 3-Tier system Toolkit; and
- -Provide and/or deliver education, training, and/or resources to STOP grantees, service providers, and CBOs about using the WOCN 3-Tier System in programs and processes.
No matter how you use the 3-Tier System Toolkit, WOCN is confident it will result in improved, innovative, more equitable, and successful planning and implementation of OVW funds to 3-Tier populations.
Please let WOCN hear how you end up using the Toolkit as well as what you find useful and what you would like more information about. We are excited to partner with you to further reach and impact in 3-Tier populations: together we can help make our communities safer and stronger.
There are specific and important steps recommended for State Administrators to engage, follow, and implement when working to improve your identification, outreach, and resourcing of 3-Tier System Populations and the CBOs serving these communities.
Below are 9 specific steps that will bring success, but not overnight – they are part of a larger process of change. Making the necessary changes to effectively and equitably serve 3-Tier System populations requires a shift in paradigms that help define approaches to developing programs and services for all survivors.
Change takes time and work but can be implemented a little at a time each day. The 3-TS Toolkit, through its 7 Essential Tools of Promising Frameworks and Practices, will educate, equip, challenge, and inspire you to take, learn, own, and act upon each of the very necessary 9 Steps to better serve all populations in your state or territory.
The 9 Steps are not meant to establish unreachable goals, impose judgment, or promote competition among STOP Administrators. They are offered as a roadmap to assist in developing a well-planned, purpose-driven, and strategic approach to fulfill your mission to ensure services reach all survivors in your localities.
WOCN’s 9 Steps
- Step 1: Reflect: Integrate ongoing reflection exercises highlighted in this Toolkit throughout your process.
- Step 2: Use A Social Justice Lens: Frame the work utilizing social justice approaches to examine oppression, identify areas of equity and non-equity, be more aware of systems of power, and consider ways to level the playing field for all survivors.
- Step 3: Expand the Definition of Underserved: Utilize the 3-Tier System to deepen your understandings of marginalized populations.
- Step 4: Become an Aspiring Ally: Make a plan to build and/or improve relationships with representatives from 3-Tier System Populations through self-examination and an evaluation of how privilege and dis-privilege based on identity impacts survivors and is reinforced by those who serve them.
- Step 5: Collaborate: Join forces with survivors and community representatives from the 3-TS Populations to enhance outreach and support for marginalized communities.
- Step 6: Utilize Technical Assistance: Draw upon the expertise of national, state, or local technical assistance providers to assist in your efforts.
- Step 7: Build Up Your Resources: Develop a library of relevant and culturally sensitive information on barriers/challenges, promising practices, and case studies/tips for supporting survivors from marginalized communities.
- Step 8: Get Ongoing Education: Continue seek out and participate in any needed skills-building opportunities and relevant trainings to increase your knowledge of reaching and serving marginalized populations.
- Step 9: Build Capacity: Develop and implement a plan to improve your capacity to reach and fund CBOs serving 3-Tier System communities, and to raise the capacity of community-based CBOs serving these communities to write and submit winning grant applications and to successfully administer federal funds.
Section II: Essential Tools 1 & 2 For Preparation
Section II addresses the importance of considering how you approach or come to the work of reaching 3-Tier populations, and identifies how mainstream philosophies, programming and strategies alone cannot effectively reach and resource underserved populations. This section challenges you to examine your perceptions about identity and pushes you to further understand yourself, the purpose of your work, how you define success in reaching 3-Tier populations.
Essential Tool #1
How Do I Utilize a Social Justice Framework (Methodology/Core Values) in Working with 3-Tier System Populations?
Introduction
Since violence does not occur in isolation, we must respond with services and advocacy that reflect integrated and intersectional approaches in order to address diverse, complex circumstances. Too often, those in organizations work in silos and miss opportunities for connecting issues, resources, and best practices for supporting survivors and mobilizing responses in a holistic fashion. Survivors’ experiences are textured by intersections or overlapping identities – whether it is immigration status or economic need or limited English proficiency or racism. As a result, services responses that utilize a broad social justice framework can more effectively grasp and address the complex challenges facing survivors from 3-Tier populations.
As Marilyn Cochran-Smith, a leading scholar in education, notes, a social justice framework is one that “actively address[es] the dynamics of oppression, privilege, and isms, [and recognizes] that society is the product of historically rooted, institutionally sanctioned stratification along socially constructed group lines that include race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and ability among others.” Social justice in violence prevention and response involves utilizing self-reflection, understanding the dynamics of power and oppression, and working to respond to and challenge inequities faced by marginalized communities and identities. Utilizing a social justice lens means that we reflect on how people, policies, practices, and institutions may be used to empower rather than re-victimize those impacted by those in decision-making roles. Through a social justice framework, we act to resist unfairness and injustice while enhancing self-determination and possibility for survivors.
Those working with 3-Tier populations can continually seek to counter oppressive, systemic patterns through self-reflection and Empowerment-Based Advocacy (EBA) rooted in a social justice framework. EBA is based on the belief that people are already empowered and are the experts in their own lives. It works to return control to communities by inviting them to gather, organize, and build their collective strength. Through EBA, we can work to ensure that the power of survivors is embraced and acknowledged, and that those within systems do not presume to know what is best for survivors and communities. EBA also helps us not act from the assumption that survivors are incapable of making decisions but instead, focus on the resilience and the strengths of survivors and communities.
Tips/Case Studies
A useful community-based research and change project is the Hmong Women’s Dialogues Project: Our Voices Create Our Future. In 2005, the Hmong Women’s Action Team (HWAT) held a retreat and conducted learning circles with women to capture their visions for a future without gender violence and gender equity.
Through these conversations, the HWAT documented individual, gendered, community, and external challenges as well as promising practices for response in each of these arenas. Through this mapping, the HWAT has been able to present promising strategies ranging from encouraging survivors to tell their stories, to supporting women’s leadership, to engaging men in gender equity efforts, to ensuring organizations that serve the community are supported.
With such information, it can be easier to envision responses to end violence that may or may not include criminal justice engagement or shelter – and allow for the spectrum of survivors’ needs and options. In this vein, STOP Administrators can either work to conduct or enable such community-informed assessments and responses as well as support the organizations that work through such a community-rooted model.
Impact
The use of a social justice framework enables us to reach and serve all survivors while acknowledging the complexity of survivors’ lives. In so doing, we can understand the impacts on survivors of such circumstances as the lack of transportation options which may diminish self-sufficiency or deporting a perpetrator who may be the family’s economic bread winner. When working across the realities of these intersections, we can better safety plan, create effective responses, and enable the necessary actions to achieve survivor safety and security.
Through knowing and comprehending the importance of social justice frameworks, STOP Administrators can support and build the capacity of programs to operate with such lenses. In so doing, STOP Administrators can support agencies to reach the broadest spectrum of survivors effectively.
Barriers to Achieving a Social Justice Framework
Significant barriers and resistance often exist in shifting to a social justice and Empowerment-Based Advocacy framework. These may include:
- -An existing division or wall between current practices in services delivery and these practices successfully addressing the root causes of violence;
- -A lack of understanding and familiarity with the intersection of identities and circumstances that texture survivors’ experiences;
- -A resistance to considering intersectional approaches given the perception that this increases the complexity of services and tracking outcomes; and
- -Divided systems and advocates who are habituated to working in isolation or with one singular issue.
Barriers and resistance in adopting a social justice framework may manifest or show up in the following ways:
- -Victim-blaming and bias against survivors;
- -A reluctance to serve 3-Tier populations;
- -Local, state, or federal political contexts that can negatively impact services and access;
- -A lack of cultural competency or cultural sensitivity in service delivery; and
- -The suggestion of shelter or use of the criminal justice system as the immediate response when these are not always a viable or comfortable option for 3-Tier survivors.
Resource Links
- -AWS Anti-Oppression Working Values
- –Community Outreach Strategies to Address Domestic Violence
- –Hmong Women’s Dialogues Project: Our Voices Create Our Future
- –National Call to Action Guidance to Aspiring Allies by WOCN
- –WOCN Power and Privilege Packet
- –Introduction to Underserved Populations powerpoint by WOCN
- –City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative
For an example of the use of social justice within government practices, visit http://www.seattle.gov/rsji/. The City of Seattle has implemented a Race and Social Justice Initiative to end institutionalized racism and race-based disparities in City government. Read their report on Racial Equity in Seattle for 2012-2014, and read such helpful resources as their Racial Equity Toolkit.
Essential Tool #2
How Does an Ongoing Practice of Reflection Help Effectively Reach & Provide Resources to 3-Tier Populations?
Introduction: What is Reflection and Why Do It?
Self-reflection, an examination of one’s own thoughts and feelings, requires maturity and a desire to know who you are and why you do what you do. It can reveal new self-knowledge that can have a positive impact on your decision-making process and outcomes. For our purposes, reflection on one’s thoughts, feelings, and choices can lead to stronger and more innovative decision-making.
Reflection is Step One in the innovative work of effectively reaching and resourcing 3-Tier Populations.
When making decisions from a place of power, relative to those impacted by such decisions, you must first pause for self-reflection. When working alone, the issue at-hand will most often become blurred and/or unfocused and will result in a diminished capacity to make the most effective decision.
Therefore, decision-makers must always recognize that scanning the environment for knowledge of history, data, and voices of survivors – coupled with the voice and work of on-the ground advocates – will bring the issue back into focus.
Inward and Outward Reflection in Decision-Making
Inward and Outward Reflection is a process utilizing self-reflection to first listen and learn the outward context/environment you are collaborating with and/or serving, and then, second, a return to new self-reflection using the newly-acquired knowledge. Decision-making that mainly relies on a single individual’s experience is an insufficient method for reaching and resourcing 3-Tier populations. Effective reflection of the environment/context requires having strong relationships with representatives of the 3-Tier populations to hear and understand their specific and unique knowledge and experiences. Please see the WOCN Reflection powerpoint to learn this process of reflection.
Who We Are Impacts Our Decisions
Individual context, experience, knowledge and beliefs influence:
- The approach to State Administrator work
- The framework for State Administrator work
- The methodology of State Administrator work
- The commitment to State Administrator work
- The risks taken in State Administrator work;
- The desired outcomes of State Administrator work.
To examine one’s own beliefs, ask:
- Where do they come from?
- What do they mean?
- What are they?; and,
- How could my beliefs be a resource or a roadblock to the mission?
Bracket or pin this knowledge for later as a part of the information to use in your decision-making process. Then gather information from 3-Tier populations and work to build effective aspiring allyships. You can also utilize the WOCN Reflection Tool with your Team and/or Staff. Finally, consider Risk, Responsibility & Impact in Decision-Making. Remember you are not alone.
The Outward Reflection process of listening to and learning with others can develop a cohort of co-workers who together will:
- Make the Co-Commitments needed to support the choices/decisions
- Take on Co-Risks that accompany the choices/decisions; and
- Bring clarity to the desired outcomes.
Before making major decisions, ask yourself:
- How do I know what I think I know about the 3-Tier populations?
- How do I assess the internal and external resources, strengths, needs and gaps of 3-Tier populations?; and,
- How does the above assessment process influence, or not, my decision-making process and outcomes in strategic planning for effectively reaching and resourcing 3-Tier populations?
Reflection can be impeded by a number of factors including:
- -A lack of time;
- -Complicated, convoluted, and time-consuming assessment and monitoring processes;
- -Anxieties about losing control or fear of confronting one’s own privilege; prejudices, and biases;
- -Concern about learning something new and then not being able to respond to the learnings; and
- -Maintaining trust in others and the process.
Suggestions for STOP Administrators
- -Schedule time in your calendar for periodic reflection (ie. once every two weeks, once a month), and treat it as any other professional appointment. Use this time to reflect on 3-Tier populations in your state or territory, plan improved outreach and involvement of these populations, and to write down concrete, short- and long-term steps to achieve improved outreach.
- -Interview staff from your office, key leaders from other offices and programs, and develop a list of reflections from these interviews that you can use as a guide for self-reflection and developing action steps.
- -Take the time to reflect upon the articles and materials in this toolkit on social justice (see header Essential Tool #1) and aspiring allies (see header Essential Tool #5), and choose a colleague to discuss your understanding of these materials, how they relate to your personal and professional lives, and identify what steps you will take to infuse this understanding into your daily activities to challenge any fear, prejudice or bias you may carry.
- -In the WOCN Manual “Cultural Competency, Sensitivities and Allies In the Anti-Violence Against Women Movement: A Resource Manual for Advocates and Allies Reaching Out to Underserved Populations”, review the “Introduction: What is Cultural Competency?” chapter, examine cultural competency as a part of a “Cultural Spectrum” and reflect upon where you as and individual and your office may be in the spectrum currently. Reflect on where you want to be in the future. See where your location in the cultural spectrum further places you and your office in the “Stages of Cultural Service Delivery.” Develop and reflect on your plan for moving further in the Cultural Spectrum and the Stages of Cultural Service Delivery.
Essential Tools 3-7 Offering "Promising Practices"
Section III contains promising practices that will assist in improving reach to 3-Tier populations. Essential Tool #3 provides instruction on identifying 3-Tier populations in your states and territories, and may help to generate new knowledge, trigger new questions, and unearth incredible potential for new and innovative strategies to effectively reaching and resourcing underserved populations. Section III will guide and help you develop the relationships that can produce access and resource sharing.
Essential Tool #3
Promising Practices for Identifying 3-Tier System Populations
WOCN has developed a more expansive and enhanced terminology beyond the term “underserved” to reflect the changing demographics and needs of shifting populations within the U.S. Using this 3-Tier terminology system (“un-served,” “underserved,” and “inadequately served”) will help better identify a spectrum of needs within populations, taking into account geographic location, racial and ethnic populations, faith and religion, sexual orientation and gender identity, language barriers, disabilities, immigration status, age, and other contexts.
Definitions of the 3-Tier System terms
- Un-served: Populations that truly have no services available to them and face severe isolation;
- Underserved: Populations that have minimal access and are in need of more outreach and support, and are, thus, “under”-served; and,
- Inadequately Served: Historically marginalized populations that may be overrepresented as they are visible in large numbers in a state or territory, but remain inadequately served with specific reference to the quality of services and a “one-size-fits-all” approach that disregards the historical and systemic disenfranchisement embedded in each system because survivors’ experiences and contexts are perceived as barriers. It is common for these larger populations to be perceived as adequately served due to their visibility and sheer numbers within their States or Territories, but this overlooks the history of marginalization and the need to acknowledge it. Also, the fact that specific populations are “overrepresented” in services demonstrates a need for specific and enhanced support to these communities. The intersecting and specific needs of 3-Tier populations may be more effectively served through culturally- and linguistically-relevant service provision that includes or is exclusive to providers that are representative of those populations. Thus, it is important that community-based programs that are responsive to the histories of these populations receive funds to enhance their services.
Applying the 3-Tier System will help improve the identification of marginalized populations in your state, district, or territory and can help in all stages of your state planning process. You can get started utilizing this system with the step-by-step Identifying 3-Tier Populations Worksheet by WOCN.
Key Steps in the Process:
- -Review documents in the Resources area.
- -Utilize the inward and outward reflection exercises to ground your goals, knowledge, and arenas of further exploration.
- -Start with your Team/Staff to review your state or territory’s Domestic Violence and/or Sexual Violence services data.
- -Using the definitions from the chart of un-served, underserved, and inadequately served populations, brainstorm with your Team/Staff to re-define the populations in your State, Territory, or jurisdiction as un-served, under-served, or inadequately served.
- -Choose one population established from Step Two and add other intersecting identities, factors, contexts, and/or attributes such as gender, mental health disabilities, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. Repeat as necessary.
Applying the 3-Tier System will:
- -Give you new ideas for reaching underserved populations;
- -Provide a new flexible framework for reaching and resourcing underserved populations;
- -Help to better identify gaps and challenges in your current processes and strategies;
- -Provide a clearer distinction among un-served, underserved, and inadequately served populations;
- -Help you recognize specific complexities of underserved populations;
- -Enable you to improve the specificity of services for diverse populations; and
- -Help you better articulate and communicate the intent of your funding and RFPs.
Many STOP Administrators have found relationship building and partnership development a concerted endeavor, but underscore its necessity to ensuring the input of 3-Tier System populations and the CBOs that represent them in order to move forward. Remember, there are challenges and barriers that may show up in various ways, but they are not impossibilities and should not halt the process.
Despite significant challenges, STOP Administrators continue to innovate and respond to the changing needs of survivors in their communities. In the surveys and listening sessions WOCN conducted, promising practices such as these were shared:
- -Focusing on the development of sustainable relationships and building stakeholder groups through site visits to diverse localities to better determine the core needs across communities;
- -Expanding the roster of those who attend strategic planning meetings and re-strategizing the quality and content of the goals and outcomes of these meetings;
- -Reaching out to other STOP Administrators to learn from and share best practices and successful methods on identifying, reaching, and including 3-Tier populations and CBOs;
- -Committing to placing concrete timeframes and goals in your State implementation plans for identifying and including 3-Tier populations; and
- -Examining demographic data from your constituencies from the last 3-5 years while assessing through program reporting data the populations you are actually serving and at what level.
These promising practices can be included as part of the implementation planning.
- -Follow the steps in the Identifying 3-Tier Populations Worksheet.
- -Utilize the activities outlined in this section so that staff in your office and your STOP Implementation Planning committee can draw collective conclusions about the 3-Tier populations in your state or territory. Develop a collective short-and long-term plan with assignments to ensure that action steps are completed.
- -Utilize conference call or video conferencing when necessary to hold these discussions and make progress while avoiding logistical hurdles, lengthy coordination times, and limitations in funds to support in-person meetings.
- -Set up a mini-orientation with any new members, including those in community-based programs where there may be high turnover. Review the results of the exercises that the STOP Implementation Planning committee or individual members completed before action steps were developed so that new members are aware of the underlying philosophies.
Essential Tool #4
Promising Practices for Relationship-Building with 3-Tier System Populations
While most survivors have faced discrimination, women of color, Native women, queer people, refugees, and others from 3-Tier populations often find themselves pushed farthest from places where they should be served, supported, and empowered. Faced with unique challenges and barriers to seeking support, and receiving little access to adequate services, survivors often look for assistance from programs in their neighborhoods such as in youth and senior centers, faith institutions, immigrant and cultural centers, or vocational organizations.
These programs are often designed to serve the community with which a survivor specifically identifies. Many of these programs have a track record of serving survivors of violence but need opportunity and support so they can plan and strengthen their services. It is crucial to build relationships with such programs and assist them in improving and enhancing their services, ensure that they have adequate resources, as well as to support their ability to evaluate and bolster their community impact.
Despite the challenges, a number of promising practices emerged to building relationships with communities:
- -Innovation: Saying it! Mentioning that we want to reach these populations;
- -Encouraging grantees and community-based agencies to use more inclusive language;
- -Educating: learning about 3-Tier populations;
- -Identifying resources for subgrantees/survivors;
- -Using the implementation planning process to get people together and be diverse in racial, cultural, faith, everything – bringing everyone to the table and having participants share promising practices;
- -Consistently funding culturally-specific trainings;
- -Increasing number of applicants of culturally-specific programs; and
- -Identifying all the groups we want to reach out to – and start contacting!
Innovation:
- -Say it! Mention that we want to reach these populations
Educating:
- -Learn about underserved populations and identify resources for subgrantees/victims
- -Be diverse in racial, cultural, everything – bring everyone to the table and have participants share best practices
- -Use implementation-planning process to get people together
- -Encourage groups to use more inclusive language
Effective Funding:
- -Merge funding streams
- -Form a grant search team through assessment needs/study/survey
- -ID gaps/potential gaps
- -Involve peers in the process
- -Set specific priorities within RFP
- -Fund innovative programs
- -Build partnership with other funding resources
- -Research specific needs with communities
- -Have a fair and competitive grant process without politics
Action Steps:
- -Fund culturally specific training consistently
- -Increase number of applicants for culturally specific program funding
- -Identify all the groups we want to reach out to – go back to this list and lead the contact process yourself
Essential Tool #5
Promising Practices for Becoming a Stronger Aspiring Ally
In all contexts, we can take a number of steps to become stronger aspiring allies. We can:
- -Choose to align publicly and privately with members from 3-Tier communities while challenging power and privilege manifested in majority contexts;
- -Ensure 3-Tier community representation at planning meetings or if there is an absence of 3-Tier representation, ask why and how to make that involvement a reality;
- -Initiate change toward personal and institutional social justice and equality. This can include promoting a sense of inclusiveness and justice in organizations and/or helping to create an environment that is hospitable for all by paying attention to the days and times that meetings are scheduled and whether meetings are easily accessible and available to those in need of childcare; and
- -Use reflection skills to ask how would your life in this organization, movement, or work be different if you were not from a privileged groups such as white/male/heterosexual/able-bodied/a manager?
Tips/Case Studies
STOP Administrators have demonstrated being strong aspiring allies by:
- -Coming up with concrete action plans to support survivors who are Limited English Proficient;
- -Funding 3-Tier communities directly;
- -Continuing to deepen the data and demographics to identify and build relationships with 3-Tier communities;
- -Attending meetings of direct services providers and coalitions to listen, offer support, and shape planning;
- -Reviewing grants and offering positive feedback and constructive TA on how to develop and improve winning grant applications; and
- -Utilizing implementation plans to enable collaboration and connecting with communities.
Tips/Case Studies
A useful community-based research and change project is the Hmong Women’s Dialogues Project: Our Voices Create Our Future. In 2005, the Hmong Women’s Action Team (HWAT) held a retreat and conducted learning circles with women to capture their visions for a future without gender violence and gender equity.
Through these conversations, the HWAT documented individual, gendered, community, and external challenges as well as promising practices for response in each of these arenas. Through this mapping, the HWAT has been able to present promising strategies ranging from encouraging survivors to tell their stories, to supporting women’s leadership, to engaging men in gender equity efforts, to ensuring organizations that serve the community are supported.
With such information, it can be easier to envision responses to end violence that may or may not include criminal justice engagement or shelter – and allow for the spectrum of survivors’ needs and options. In this vein, STOP Administrators can either work to conduct or enable such community-informed assessments and responses as well as support the organizations that work through such a community-rooted model.
Being a stronger aspiring ally is a process but this evolution can be limited or impeded by:
- -Failure to acknowledge power and privilege as it can be challenging to recognize;
- -The propensity to decide what’s good for 3-Tier communities;
- -Feeling threatened when 3-Tier communities seek their own spaces and places; and
- -Guilt that leads to paralysis and often transfers the responsibility of attaining equality to 3-Tier communities.
- -Paul Kivel: Guidelines for Being Strong White Allies
- -Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression: The Role of Allies as Agents of Change
- -Oppression Assumptions
- -National Call to Action Guidance to Aspiring Allies by WOCN
- -WOCN Power and Privilege Packet
- -Cultural Competency, Sensitivities and Allies In the Anti-Violence Against Women Movement: A Resource Manual for Advocates and Allies Reaching Out to Underserved Populations by WOCN
Essential Tool #6
Promising Practices for Providing Effective Technical Assistance to CBOs serving 3-Tier System Populations
Effective technical assistance (TA) for community-based organizations (CBOs) serving the 3-Tier Populations includes providing context-specific education, training, and resources to build and sustain organizational and programmatic capacity. This could mean TA about everything from strategic planning to grant compliance to coaching on grant writing to program evaluation and reporting.
In all cases, at the forefront of this work is TA that equips CBOs to successfully participate in federal and state-level grant systems. Given that 3-Tier populations are often already marginalized, it is vital that TA be designed to challenge and circumvent structural barriers that hinder the sustainability and success of CBOs serving these populations.
Through our work with STOP Administrators, WOCN can attest to the fact that many have the commitment, compassion, and capacity to ensure that technical assistance is available to CBOs. But CBOs must know about this opportunity and seek it.
During the WOCN STOP Administrator Action Meetings held in early 2013, a State Administrator asked one of the most important questions in regards to providing effective TA for CBOs serving 3-Tier Populations: “Why don’t [minority communities] come?” This question points to the need to examine the larger context of a limited access for and marginalization of 3-Tier populations, as well as the need for new marketing and outreach strategies to enable innovative, intentional, relevant, and successful outreach to 3-Tier populations and advocates.
Therefore, the three main questions that STOP Administrators should ask themselves for effective technical assistance are:
- -How do we get CBOs serving the 3-Tier Populations interested and to the TA table?
- -What technical assistance will best equip CBOs to successfully qualify for, participate in RFP processes, and receive sufficient grant funding?
- -What is the best way to assess capacity-building needs for CBOs serving 3-tier populations?
Despite significant challenges, STOP Administrators have noted a number of useful practices in order to enable effective TA for CBOs:
- -Building a clear TA strategy into your STOP Plan with goal & problem definition and a process for enabling response and outcomes;
- -Going to CBOs to deliver TA;
- -Partnering to incorporate training from national technical assistance providers such as WOCN, Asian Pacific Islander Institute on Domestic Violence, Casa de Esperanza, Institute on Domestic Violence in the African American Community, and Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault;
- -Allowing more entry points for the grant process;
- -Combining funding streams so grantees can sustain, bolster, and expand the work and its parameters;
- -Enabling program-to-program mentoring;
- -Funding culturally-specific trainings consistently;
- -Including your Advisory Team and CBO input in the work;
- -Using the 3-Tier System to identify populations and CBOs serving these communities;
- -Becoming an aspiring ally;
- -Incorporating questions into your reflection process with staff which will support you to remember in decision-making that you want Co-Commitment, Co-Risk, and Clear Outcomes with 3-Tier Populations; and
- -Attending a WOCN webinar on Building Successful Relationships.
In the efforts of STOP Administrators to expand capacity to reach and resource 3-Tier System populations, innovative strategies of outreach and TA are necessary for program efficacy. The implementation of new TA processes addresses marginalization of culturally specific CBOs from the domestic and sexual violence RFPs.
More equitable and open funding processes will change and improve access to relevant and effective services to survivors across the nation and shift the paradigm of “us and them” to a joint effort to end violence across our communities.
Effective Technical Assistance to CBOs serving underserved populations will:
- -Increase successful programs participation as well as respect and trust for State Administrators and agencies;
- -Improve and increase relationships and communication with CBOs serving underserved populations;
- -Improve the grant application skills of CBOs serving underserved populations; and
- -Improve your ability to reach your goals to serve underserved populations.
- -Review the WOCN powerpoint “Addressing Underserved, Un-served and Inadequately Served Populations: Implementing Needs Assessments” presented during the Annual STOP Administrators Meeting in February 2011 in Kentucky. Review slide #6 that shows the “spectrum of need” for 3-Tier populations. Then examine slide #7 which shows the “spectrum of strengths” for 3-Tier populations. Finally, review slide #8, which discusses the difference between “populations” and “communities”. Consider adding to your action steps learning more about the positive aspects, the strengths, and the resilience of 3-Tier communities, and challenging any places in thinking where you may view them only as “populations” and resolve to get to know them as “communities”.
- -Utilize the WOCN powerpoint “Addressing Underserved, Un-served and Inadequately Served Populations: Implementing Needs Assessments” and consider identifying and partnering with community leaders within those 3-Tier populations you identify in your state or territory and conduct a needs assessment. Invite them to join your STOP Implementation Planning team. Utilize slides #9-13 to plan, adopt methods, identify audience, and ask questions that will help create a greater understanding of the needs and strengths of 3-Tier communities. Use this information to build stronger relationships with these communities and the CBOs that serve them.
- -If you have a small team within your STOP Office, take the time to develop ways to better manage and administer grants. Utilize national technical assistance providers to help review your systems for grants management and consider viable alternatives to better streamline your collective work.
- -If you are located within a rural state or territory, seek assistance to examine geographic limitations and any socioeconomic factors that further entrench these challenges, and identify any solutions that may help mitigate these challenges, including amplifying any strengths that may also exist within these remote localities.
Essential Tool #7
Promising Practices for Initiating Innovative Funding Strategies to Support and Resource CBOs Serving 3-Tier System Populations
Especially as funds tighten and needs increase, it is difficult to reach all the communities we seek to support. Furthermore, it is often difficult to incorporate new groups in funding cycles. Still, it is important for STOP Administrators to provide equal access to participation in potential funding streams. For 3-Tier populations, the process of developing organizational and infrastructural capacity can take a number of years.
As one STOP Administrator noted, a focus on long-range planning and relationship-building as well as attention to CBO development is critical: “These projects take time to build and time to be successful. Funding cycles have to allow for time and costs that build success.” Essentially, there is no quick fix solution for ensuring that funding reaches across our communities. However, with commitment, time, and innovative RFPs & funding practices, we can get closer to expanding our reach to all communities.
Despite the immense challenges in the field in getting funding to underserved populations, STOP Administrators identified a number of innovative practices for funding community-based organizations and 3-Tier System populations including:
- -Mandating that all grant applications identify underserved populations;
- -Determining specific priorities within a request for proposal (RFP);
- -Including special initiatives or special projects to enable new funding streams;
- -Having 1-year cycles for grants but allowing for extensions;
- -Having 2-year grant cycles to improve outcomes;
- -Having 3-year grant cycles where only new programs can apply in the 3rd year;
- -Re-allocating unspent funds in a grant period for underserved communities;
- -Combining grant funds as feasible from related government sources;
- -Building partnerships with other funding resources;
- -Forming a grant search team through assessing and surveying needs and identifying gaps;
- -Involving peers in the process;
- -Enabling funds to support innovation as well as agency strength and infrastructure as feasible; and,
- -Conducting site visits every 3-6 years to deepen relationships and sustain growth and impacts.
Case Study
A useful private foundation research and funding project may offer additional perspectives on how other anti-violence grantmakers are ascertaining and addressing funding needs. From 2007-2009, Blue Shield Against Violence drew input from California agencies on needs in the field and grantees’ own needs.
The result is a new funding paradigm designed to respond to the reality that agencies are striving to do more with less. While not all the options or methods can translate to government funding pools, the research and needs definition process may help all fund administrators consider how to assess priorities and update funding RFPs to respond to current needs.
A funding process that incorporates innovation and awareness of current field and agency needs allows for inclusion of funding to 3-Tier and emerging populations. In designing funding cycles, RFPs, and technical assistance that are dynamic and flexible, we can respond to a diversity of needs while fostering innovation, core services, and field advancement. By fostering partnerships amongst funders and grantees, we can work together in serving survivors and working to end violence – as part of a larger movement of accountability, hope, and change.
Initiating Innovative Funding Strategies to Resource CBOs Serving 3-Tier Populations will:
- -Increase successful participation of culturally-specific programs;
- -Support innovative programs, pilot projects, and research as well as diverse approaches to survivor services;
- -Garner further respect for State Administrators and agencies from CBOs and underserved communities; and
- -Support and inspire staff in creative thinking.
Substantial challenges stand in the way of getting funding to all groups we seek to support. Some of these challenges include:
- -Funding cuts and shrinking funding sources;
- -A lack of capacity for some CBOs to manage the complexity of government grants including detailed program tracking and financial reporting;
- -Lack of adequate funding and resources to support CBO development; and
- -Lack of time and resources to develop extensive relationships with CBOs.
- -Review the resources highlighting the strides made in the Strong Field Project in California, and consider using their strategies to map the leadership, organizational capacity and network/strategic collaborations of the communities you are attempting to reach, and do the same for your STOP Implementation team. Consider what skills and strengths are already at the Implementation table that can be used to coach and enhance the capacity of CBOs via conference call or webinar at lesser cost than face-to-face training on such topics as submitting successful grant applications and government grants management. Record and keep these conference calls or webinars on your website in order to allow each access and to avert the need to repeat this training over and over again.
- -Look to national technical assistance providers to assist or serve as speakers in training for CBOs as a part of their technical assistance projects.
- -Seek partnerships with other government entities to co-host training and tutorials on topics of interest to common constituents or to serve as guest speakers in STOP Office programming for CBOs.
- -Reinforce the importance of partnerships for CBOs who might come together to apply for grants to maximize funding through joint projects. Facilitate a discussion among CBOs about unique, strategic approaches that they can take to better maximize government funds, or to seek supplemental funding through private entities or other government funding programs.
- -Showcase successful CBOs who have improved their capacity to write winning government grant proposals, manage government grants, utilize other pots of funding to supplement and sustain the work, and effectively reach and serve 3-Tier populations.
Resource Links
- -AWS Anti-Oppression Working Values
- –Community Outreach Strategies to Address Domestic Violence
- –Hmong Women’s Dialogues Project: Our Voices Create Our Future
- –National Call to Action Guidance to Aspiring Allies by WOCN
- –WOCN Power and Privilege Packet
- –Introduction to Underserved Populations powerpoint by WOCN
- –City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative
For an example of the use of social justice within government practices, visit http://www.seattle.gov/rsji/. The City of Seattle has implemented a Race and Social Justice Initiative to end institutionalized racism and race-based disparities in City government. Read their report on Racial Equity in Seattle for 2012-2014, and read such helpful resources as their Racial Equity Toolkit.