Nothing About Us Without Us

In the toolkit, River Network and partners define Community-Led Research (CLR) as:

"A process through which community members come together to gather and synthesize their collective wisdom and knowledge in order to more fully understand how a problem—or set of problems—impact their community, to identify solutions that will work best for their specific community, and to build a case for support."

CLR works best when it is approached as an inclusive, community-driven and -centered process where all segments of the community's residents are represented and engaged in the process, with special attention to lifting up voices that have historically been left out of community decisions. This means, residents have leadership roles in:

• the decision to do CLR in the first place
• the design of the CLR project
• the implementation of the CLR project
• the analysis of the community-generated data
• the decision(s) on how the community-generated data will be used.

Three key methods are outlined in the River Network toolkit: (1)  Remote Crowdsourcing , (2)  Community Mapping Exercises , and (3)  Person-to-Person Surveying .

Remote  crowdsourced data collection  is a participatory method of building a dataset with the help of a large group of people. In this context, a large number of people are recruited to share information remotely, usually via the internet and/or smartphone apps, to collectively build a dataset which demonstrates a community problem that needs to be addressed.

Remote crowdsourcing has the potential to collect large amounts of data from a large number of contributors in dispersed areas. At the same time, there is limited direct interaction with residents in the community.

WCWA worked with a four-person, advisory team of local leaders and residents to guide the project, develop a community outreach plan, design a community survey, and work with young borough residents to administer the survey door-to-door, at community events, and online. Survey participants received Walmart gift cards for their participation.

Of the 104 survey respondents, 82% indicated that they had experienced flooding at least one to three times in the past, and a significant number acknowledged experiencing negative impacts to their mental health, household finances, and property as a result. Further, the data showed some important differences in how Spanish- and English-speaking residents are impacted by flooding and which flood reduction strategies they prefer.

The responses to the survey are guiding the green infrastructure plan, as well as informing local advocacy on a number of related issues like safe pedestrian corridors, improved emergency services, and additional affordable housing options outside of the flood zone.

Location: Cherry Hill and Belair-Edison Neighborhoods Project: Lifting the Veil on Sewage: Connecting Baltimore Communities with Resources and Relief Partners:  Cherry Hill Development Corporation ,  Belair-Edison Community Association , University of Maryland’s  Stormwater Infrastructure Resilience and Justice (SIRJ) Lab  and  Water Quality, Outreach, and Wellness (WOW) Lab  CLR Method: Person-to-Person Surveying and Bacterial Sampling Contact:  Taylor Smith-Hams , Advocacy & Outreach Senior Manager

Building on a 2020 John's Hopkins University  SOURCE program  study that found that sewage backups disproportionately impact Black communities in the Cherry Hill and Belair-Edison neighborhoods of Baltimore,  Blue Water Baltimore  (BWB) and its partners initiated a CLR project to evaluate the true cost of the back-ups and conducted direct outreach to provide information and support to help impacted residents.

One goal of this CLR project is to bolster BWB’s and residents’ case that the City of Baltimore must strengthen the  Expedited Reimbursement  and  Sewage Onsite Support Programs , which are designed to help residents experiencing backups with cleanup and recovery activities but have low rates of participation and applicant acceptance.

BWB and University of Maryland faculty collaborated with community leaders in the Cherry Hill and Belair-Edison neighborhoods to design a community survey and conduct outreach to over 40 local households. Among other things, project participants were asked about their experiences with sewer backups, related impacts to their physical and mental health, and the extent of local government warnings and response. The survey was coupled with bacterial sampling in the basements of willing residents to test for the presence of water quality indicators and pathogens. Participants were provided a $75 stipend, and new participants were identified in the process through snowball sampling.

Once the data analysis has been completed and bacterial samples have been processed, BWB, UMD, and community leaders will share the results with individual homeowners, along with resources to mitigate any bacteria found in their homes. The compiled, anonymized data will be shared with the community at large to increase knowledge about the extent of sewage backups in each community. They will also capture video recordings of residents willing to share their personal stories of the impacts of recurring sewer back-ups in their homes, to make the case to local officials of the dire need to provide additional support to impacted residents and prioritize infrastructure investments in the Cherry Hill and Belair-Edison neighborhoods.

A project team made up of English- and Spanish-speaking residents, WSR staff, and NAC members designed a bilingual survey to distribute at local outreach events located at a grocery store and a park. About 70 people were engaged through these events where they also invited participants to physically mark locations that are frequently flooded and/or where water ponds following rain events on large paper maps. Data collected indicated that a large majority of the participants (80%) experienced flooding in their home in the last 20 years and expect it to be a problem in the future. Participants also reflected that flooding of their home impacts them not only financially, but physically and mentally as well.

The project team used the information to advocate to local decision-makers—city leaders and County Commissioners—for equitable spending of public dollars to alleviate flooding in northeast Houston and held a press conference to highlight the disproportional harms and funding inequities experienced by neighborhood residents. Though the residents of northeast Houston continue to advocate for local investments and seek long-term solutions, WSR and NAC report that through the CLR process they have developed a more nuanced analysis of the existing inequities in Houston while centering the knowledge of those experiencing flooding in their community.

To learn more about  WSR’s efforts to lift the voices of northeast Houston residents, see  Survivors as Experts .

Location: Ponce, Puerto Rico Project: Building Socio-Ecological Resilience: Community Inventory of Unused properties and Flood-Prone Coastal Areas in Playa del Ponce Partner:  Centro para la Reconstruccion del Habitat, Inc.  CLR Method: Community Mapping Contact:  David Southgate , Advisor to Un Nuevo Amanecer, Inc.

With a population of about 11,400, the community of Playa de Ponce is a small, low-lying urbanized coastal community on the southern coast of Puerto Rico that is subject to coastal storms, riverine flooding and urban stormwater runoff exacerbated by inadequate municipal infrastructure. Hurricanes and other natural disasters contributed to a significant (19%) decrease in Playa de Ponce’s population from 2010-2020. This has, in turn, led to a housing vacancy of over 30% in the informal settlements that house Playa’s most socially vulnerable residents.

 Un Nuevo Amanecer  partnered with the  Centro para la Reconstruccion del Habitat, Inc.  and local residents to develop an inventory of unused residential and commercial properties and areas prone to flooding. Maps of these areas can be used to identify potential sites for green infrastructure installations and natural flood buffer restoration. These sites can also be transformed to provide other economic, physical, or social resilience benefits for the community of Playa de Ponce.