Impact Engines | Community to Community: Policy Equity for All
Community to Community: Policy Equity for All
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Boston Policy Forum 2025
Join us to learn about and discuss collaborative research focused on innovating community-responsive policies and practice in the criminal and legal justice systems. Policymakers, scholars, and community leaders will explore solutions to decrease bias in police traffic stops, reduce recidivism for returning citizens, and support women at the intersection of sex work and substance use disorders. With a focus on radical inclusion, equity, and action, the day will feature engaging discussions, networking opportunities, and resources to advance impactful collaborations.
Oakland Spring Conference 2025
Join us for a full-day convening featuring community leaders, engaged educators, artists, responsible AI innovators and other creatives for multi-disciplinary conversations and collaboration. We gather across sectors in this critical time to advance equitable policies and practices in education models and career pathways to create opportunity, representation, belonging in the Bay Area and beyond. Panels will explore cultural placemaking, creative tech, art and wellness, industry trends, educational resources, and new opportunities including live poetry, music, and networking opportunities.
The Latest
C2C Director, Dr. Alicia Modestino, has been named the 2024 Evidence Champion by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) for her collaborative research on youth employment and community partnerships.
Read here.
Get Involved
C2C is proud to support Summer Youth Employment in Boston and Oakland. You can support our community’s youth by contributing to the C2C Impact Fund!
Inequity is a leading problem of our time.
Public policy is a solution.
Community to Community (C2C) uses data and analysis to design, implement, and evaluate public policies that push the needle forward on complex problems found in urban areas. We are scholars, researchers, policymakers, students, and community organizers working together to utilize a community-engaged research approach that fosters long term mutually beneficial partnerships.
Vision
We envision a world connected by thriving communities where shared knowledge creates equitable access to purpose, power, and prosperity.
Mission
Our mission is to understand and address social disparities by fostering trusting relationships between academic researchers and community or government partners. Centering the wisdom of community voices, we co-create research evidence that advances equitable practices and policies in the places our university calls home.
Values
What is needed to drive societal impact?
Bridging the gap in public policy.
Local policymakers often lack rigorous data and analysis about which policies are most effective, yet academics typically do not apply their knowledge to the most pressing policy issues in these local contexts, creating a gap between knowledge and practice.
C2C responds to real-world policy problems and creates societal impact through a fundamental shift in the way community-engaged research is conducted. Our iterative engage-think-do model promotes the co-production of policy analysis and implementation by connecting real-world practitioners that are closest to the problems with academics skilled in data and analysis. We use program evaluation and research evidence to fuel policy changes and fund programs that are driving societal impact. Every successful partnership gets us one step closer to the world we envision.
TESTIMONIALS
Adam Gamoran
President, William T. Grant Foundation
“Research conducted in partnership with public agencies finds a ready audience for action. Our foundation supports research that yields high profile findings. One example is summer youth employment opportunities in Boston. We had a study by Alicia Modestino, an economist at Northeastern University, showing that investments in summer youth employment payoff for less crime and more educational attainment, and she’s continuing that work in Boston.”
Rashad Cope
Deputy Chief of Worker Empowerment, City of Boston
“Before partnering with Northeastern, anecdotally, we knew a lot of challenges existed for youth to access the program, but it was very difficult to communicate these challenges from a policy standpoint to our administration without data to back it up. We were excited to lean on Northeastern to add credibility to this work and to the challenges that we know existed, so we could really develop a plan to address some of these issues. Now we have recommendations around ways we can centralize some of these processes through a common intake and have a system that serves as a depository of all youth applicants, so we can better see inequities that may exist, and see ways we can really improve the program.”
Sofia Navarro
Executive Director, Oakland Workforce Development Board
“Local government and university partnerships are essential to expanding social equity in our cities. The City of Oakland is fortunate to partner with C2C Northeastern to advance economic and workforce development goals through co-convening aligned stakeholders and building policy solutions that center evidence-based research and community voice. We are inspired by the results C2C has achieved in Boston to expand summer youth employment and we hope to incorporate insights from that work here in Oakland..”