Subject: Announcing Abt's new Social Equity and Empowerment (SE&E) Center
From: Mark Spranca <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2014 21:30:50 +0000

I’m pleased to announce Abt’s new Social Equity and Empowerment (SE&E) Center.   This new Method Center will offer tools and support to proposals and projects in their efforts to advance social equity through sound measurement and systematic and effective approaches to social change.

Abt’s clients frequently ask us to examine whether, how and why programs and policies affect different social groups differently.  Increasingly, our clients are also asking us how to mitigate the disparities we often observe. The SE&E Center will advance the science of social equity and empowerment by creating evidence-based tools and approaches to measure and mitigate disparities across gender, age, ethnicity, and other social dimensions.

The SE&E Center will support project design and implementation to address the needs of population groups that are traditionally vulnerable or marginalized.  The support will consist of a process of analysis, integration, monitoring, and continuous quality improvement with special attention to groups with multiple vulnerabilities (e.g. poverty and disability). The Center will offer projects  tools and methods to incorporate equity-based approaches into project design and implementation.

This new Center joins the existing Methods Centers in offering:

·         Professional Development Opportunities (brown bags, trainings, awareness)

·         Consultative Services (discover how you can add these methods to your proposals and projects)

·         Tools and methods to increase the impact of our work

The SE&E Center has been spearheaded by IHD’s Abby Donner and a team assembled as she connected needs with existing capacity. The SE&E Center has found people, projects and proposals to work with across divisions, departments and disciplines, and the Center has begun to develop a formal advisory group.  Additional information, including capability statements, resources, and integration checklists, is available here.

To join the Center, and find ways to integrate these methods into your proposal and project work, contact [email-masked]  or (617) 520-2655.

Mark

Mark D Spranca, PhD | Vice President of Reputational Capital and Technical Leadership | Abt Associates

55 Wheeler Street | Cambridge, MA 02138-1168

O: 617.349.2634 | F: 617.386.7650 | www.abtassociates.com