The Indianola Promise Community (IPC) is a project of Delta Health Alliance (DHA) that unites health care, education, community, and faith-based services to create a ‘pipeline’ of resources, from prenatal care through high school graduation, with the goal of leading students into meaningful careers and financial independence to ultimately break the cycle of poverty. To ensure the success of the IPC, DHA has committed to maximizing performance and demonstrating outcomes by implementing performance management practices across all programs and conducting independent evaluations and assessments throughout the life of the project.

In late 2012, DHA was awarded a five-year $30 million Promise Neighborhoods grant from the U.S. Department of Education to strengthen its existing promise community programs and grow new ones. The IPC was one of only seven recipients selected for the grant and the only awarded program serving a rural area.

The grant comes at a time when the IPC is poised for growth—for four years, DHA has worked to build the infrastructure to support a collective approach to achieving their mission, with multiple programs and services complementing each other and building on each other in a coordinated fashion. Additionally, DHA implemented Efforts to Outcomes (ETO®) software to support ongoing measurement and demonstration of program outcomes. With the Promise Neighborhoods grant and with a solid foundation on which to build, DHA will be able to expand the IPC to serve more youth for a longer period of time.

Documented NeedThe challenges the Indianola community faces, and that DHA plans to address through the IPC, are well-documented through census and economic data—the Mississippi Delta is among the poorest and most disadvantaged areas in the U.S. with a long history of lack of access to appropriate services, poor health outcomes and intergenerational poverty. The Mississippi Delta includes only 20% of Mississippi’s population but is responsible for reducing

Social Solutions and Promise Neighborhoods

Efforts to Outcomes software supports Promise Neighborhood programs’ collaborative efforts:

• Harlem Children’s Zone® selected ETO software in 2005 and has been using it ever since. ETO software provides case management capabilities, and helps to effectively measure efforts and outcomes across multiple programs and entities

• The Promise Neighborhood Institute at PolicyLink, training and technical assistance provider for the US Department of Education’s Promise Neighborhoods program, selected ETO software to be used by all 38 of its member communities and has plans to expand service to even more organizations as the program develops

• Several Promise Neighborhood agencies use ETO software for other programs. Martha O’Bryan Center, for instance, uses ETO software across the organization’s youth and family programs, not merely those that fall under their Promise Neighborhood efforts

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Delta Health Alliance Indianola Promise Community

state averages in economic and health measures to the extent that Mississippi is at the bottom of many nationwide rankings.

In addition to demographics data, a preliminary needs assessment conducted by DHA revealed several service gaps and weaknesses in the community, including: Inadequate learning-based child care facilities and lack of capacity in the local Head Start program. Almost complete lack of after-school academic or recreational programs targeting adolescents. No public transportation services. High degree of segregation among blacks and whites in social, business and academic settings. Lack of parental involvement in children’s school and recreational activities. Only two career readiness programs. Absence of pediatricians—70% of children in Indianola are cared for by three family practice physicians. Inadequate teen pregnancy prevention services given the area’s high teen pregnancy rate.

Establishing the Indianola Promise CommunityDHA began laying the groundwork for the IPC in 2009 when it began developing relationships with partner organizations and worked to achieve buy-in from community members into the Promise Community by providing summer camps for local children and leading other community initiatives, such as building a playground and forming a community association.

In 2011, DHA received a $5 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to fund the IPC’s early childhood education programs, which have the primary goals of increasing early childhood provider quality and sustainability, increasing early literacy skills of incoming kindergarten students, increasing parental involvement and teacher effectiveness, and lowering the retention rate of kindergarten and first grade students in Indianola schools.

DHA also worked to develop and expand additional wraparound services to support adolescents during and beyond the elementary school years up to age 18. With the help of local community organizations, DHA implemented programs such as BART, a sexual health education program for ages 14-18, the Summer Camps, a reading and math skills development program for students 13-24 years old, and Summer GRADS, a job training program for recent high school graduates and GED recipients.

Measuring ImpactFrom the beginning, DHA understood the importance of tracking per-formance data and measuring outcomes so they could understand their impact, provide effective programming, and secure funding.

DHA implemented ETO software to track participant demographics and progress, and to report program outcomes to funders and stake-holders.

“I do believe that having the ETO system in place and how we plan to use it contributed to us being selected for the Promise Neighborhood Grant. Even though we did not have any outcomes at that time, we did have a system in place, and that spoke a lot to our commitment to providing high quality, highly-effective programs for our community.”

-Deborah MooreAssistant VP of Community Relations,

Delta Health Alliance Indianola Promise Community

Indianola Demographics

• 65% of Indianola residents graduate from high school and only 15% possess a bachelor’s degree or higher

• 23% Indianola families live in poverty, while nearly 27% live below the poverty level

• In April 2010, the unemployment rate in Sunflower County, in which Indianola is located, was 16% compared to 11% statewide and 10% nationally

• Of the 199 births in Sunflower County in 2010, 28% were to teen mothers

“We knew from modeling some of the concepts from Harlem Chil-dren’s Zone how important data was going to be for our Promise Com-munity. We want to track the progress of children as they make their way through the pipeline and the effectiveness of our programs. We also want to be able to tell our story through the data—we knew from working with our funders that they adhere more to data than anecdotal stories, so we wanted to put ourselves in a position to be as appealing to funders as possible.” -Deborah Moore, Associate VP of Community Relations at Delta Health Alliance Indianola Promise Community.

DHA has worked diligently to train program partners on the system, achieve buy-in and demonstrate how program data will help achieve their goal of connecting various programs and resources for the over-all benefit of the community. When the full ETO system is in place and training is complete, DHA expects to utilize real-time reporting to manage performance, track and refer participants between programs, track program staff activity, and understand the optimal combination of services to help children achieve the most success.

While it is still early in DHA’s use of the ETO system, they have already begun tracking program outcomes and demonstrating suc-cesses to funders, including those of its Summer GRADS program. In the program, which targets economically disadvantaged teens who have a high school degree or equivalent, but lack practical workforce skills, participants receive 40 hours of basic skills de-velopment courses and are partnered with a local employer for ad-vanced skills development through a paid 8-12 week internship.

With ETO software, staff were able to track participant progress through the program and their attainment of primary outcomes. Among the program’s participant outcomes is attainment of Mississippi Career Readiness Certification, an evidence-based credential that certifies essential skills needed for workplace success. Of Summer GRADS’ 2012 participants, 85% attained certification.

As DHA implements the Promise Neighborhood Grant, it plans to ex-pand programs for adolescents and extend services for youth until age 24. DHA expects its ability to report outcomes data and its commit-ment to providing outcomes-driven programs will further strengthen relationships with funders and bring in new, additional funding streams.

Indianola Promise Neighborhood Summer GRADS Program 2012

Data on the number of Career Readiness Certificates Awarded.

Bronze CertificateReports an individual’s applied mathematics, locating information and reading for information levels of skills in relation to the level needed in 30% of the jobs and occupations contained in ACT’s Work Keys database.

Silver CertificateSkills match 65% of the jobs and occupations in the database.

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