Bread & Roses

Bread & Roses, an organization bringing free, live, quality entertainment to people confined in institutions or otherwise isolated from society, was ready to grow its program and reach more adults and children throughout the Bay Area. The organization asked Korwin Consulting to conduct a market analysis to identify the universe of prospective organizations to which they might bring their programming. Findings from this study enabled Bread & Roses to implement steps for strategic growth in the ensuing years.

Bay Area Community Resources (BACR) promotes the healthy development of individuals, families, and communities through direct services, volunteerism, and partnerships in the San Francisco Bay Area. Korwin Consulting led a 6-week evaluation learning circle with emerging BACR organizational leaders, training these staff members to use an evaluative lens to design, assess, and modify programs and strategies that foster safer and healthier communities throughout the Bay Area.

The Alameda County-wide Homeless Continuum of Care Council conducted a survey with 1,500 homeless and near-homeless people to obtain reliable information about the number, composition, and service needs of the county’s homeless population. Working in collaboration with colleagues, Korwin Consulting designed a curriculum to train survey interviewers, developed training materials, and trained 200 volunteer interviewers recruited to administer this survey.

Korwin Consulting evaluated the Victim Advocacy Project, an early intervention model that enables the Support Network for Battered Women (SNBW) to proactively reach out to victims of domestic violence and provide them with access to support and services. Through an analysis of the domestic violence victims’ characteristics and program service delivery, as well as interviews with SNBW staff, detectives at participating police departments, and clients, this evaluation identified aspects of the program that are working and those that may need to be strengthened.

Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence, a Santa Clara-based comprehensive domestic violence agency, contracted with Korwin Consulting to evaluate the HomeSafe transitional housing program. Through a combination of key informant interviews, focus groups, and data analysis, Korwin Consulting’s retrospective evaluation of HomeSafe provided Next Door with the information needed to determine HomeSafe’s future program direction.

Narika seeks to confront the problem of domestic violence in the South Asian community and address the unmet needs of abused South Asians within a culturally sensitive, linguistically diverse model. Korwin Consulting assisted Narika in designing an evaluation for its Survivor Economic Empowerment and Development (SEED) program. SEED aims to prevent domestic violence and foster a safer community by strengthening the economic self-sufficiency and self-confidence of South Asian women through the development of leadership skills and the encouragement of personal and professional growth.

Korwin Consulting facilitated a year-long outcome-based planning process in collaboration with the City of San Jose’s Family/Domestic Violence Advisory Board. Through a review of local, state, and national data; interviews with key community leaders; and the convening of strategic community planning retreats, the Advisory Board is better positioned to respond effectively to domestic and family violence within their community.

As an advocate for social change, California Partnership to End Domestic Violence’s (CPEDV) prevention strategy is to promote respectful and equitable nonviolent relationships through individual-, relationship-, community-, and societal-level change. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funds CPEDV which, in turn, provides funding and support for four local California communities to prevent and respond to intimate partner violence within their community. All four local coordinated community response teams (CCRs) focused efforts, in part, on preventing and addressing the impact of domestic violence on children and/or youth. Using a combination of one-on-one coaching, training, evaluation design, and analysis, Korwin Consulting built CPEDV and their prevention partners’ capacity to evaluate, strengthen, and sustain their prevention efforts.