Promesa Boyle Heights, a neighborhood-level collaborative in Los Angeles, works to deliberately develop relationships, coordination, and alignment across multiple partners to benefit young people and families – with positive, measurable results. One unique aspect of Promesa is the substantive engagement of parents, youth, and residents as key stakeholders, decision-makers, and owners of the work. This engagement is too often missing in collaborative education and collective impact efforts, but lays crucial groundwork for ongoing support, sustainability, and success.
This study by AISR, with support from the Ford Foundation, was conducted with the hope that an exploration of the processes, structures, and belief systems of Promesa Boyle Heights, as well as the lessons learned by the collaborative, would be of value to those working to foster meaningful collaboration across the educational ecosystem.