As a Certified Health Education Specialist, Danielle has deep expertise in qualitative research methodologies, particularly phenomenology, and adeptly integrates the lived experiences of marginalized communities into policy and program development. Her work emphasizes the intersectionality of education with other social systems, such as child welfare, focusing on improving individual and communal circumstances.

At Community Science, she is involved in many initiatives that focus on the lived experiences of young people who are not connected to the education or workforce systems. She helps to implement and manage the research, evaluation, and capacity-building activities for such initiatives. For instance, Danielle has played a crucial role in leading the qualitative analysis for the “Connecticut Unspoken Crisis: Elevating the Voices of Young People” study, ensuring that the insights derived were both rigorous and actionable. Her leadership is profoundly demonstrated in her management of the Community Advisory Group (CAG). She has developed a sophisticated capacity-building framework for CAG members, equipping them with the tools necessary for effective participation in the research process and advocacy.

Dontarious is passionate about youth leadership and engagement, community development, urban planning, and organizational effectiveness. He is eager to ensure that people, especially those whose voices are typically not heard or dismissed, are part of solutions designed to address their concerns and improve the conditions in which they learn, work, and live. Related to this, he is keen to help build the competencies of organizations — small and large — to be able to practice authentic community engagement and use data to inform their work.

At Community Science, Dontarious contributes to many evaluations and research studies to understand the challenges facing youth from economically disadvantaged communities, assess the impact of leadership development programs to enhance the skills of nonprofit leaders, and inform regional community engagement strategies. He has been an integral member of the qualitative study on the voices of young people experiencing disconnection from school and work. He has played a key role in developing capacity-building efforts for the studies Community Advisory Group, including facilitation materials, toolkits, and other resources.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: All right. We’re one after the hour, so I’m going to get us going and kick us off. My name is Brandy Gilbert, a warm welcome from our community science team. You’ve joined today for intergenerational community advisory groups as a tool to support research to policy efforts. We’re super excited to have you today. And we have lots of great discussion and amazing panelists and guest speakers on today. Next slide, please.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Today, we’re going to be talking about a few things we recently have done some community advisory group work based in Connecticut from our study, looking at the experiences of young people who have experienced disconnection from school and work.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: and we’ll be talking a little bit about community advisory groups and engagement with communities in general in particular youth engagement. And then we’ll also be just sharing real stories from our community advisory group work with our CAG members here today.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Next slide.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: So as I shared here are takeaways. These are the things we’re going to be hopping into. We also encourage you to dig into some materials that we’ll share from our previous webinars. This is the 3rd webinar and a set of a series that we’ve been having to talk about the study as well as lots of cool things about the real nuts and bolts of doing research to practice and policy work.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: And so we’ll continue that discussion today to think about when you are doing research to practice the policy work. What does it look like to also engage people with lived experiences in particular, young people?

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Next slide.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: A warm welcome from our company, Community Science. I like to say, my usual is that what we do is in our name, meaning that we use science, information, and rigor to come alongside and really, along with communities.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Including young people, to have the changes that they want to see in their community. So that really means making things stronger, that are working well, and then addressing things that might be challenging with data, information, capacity, building and strategy all those good things so welcome from all of us at Community Science.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: And here. I’m going to pass off to your host and your practitioners. Today. I’m Brandi Gilbert, Senior Associate from Community Science. I lead our practice area on youth engagement and youth development, and I’m going to be passing over to our hosts, Danielle Gilmore and Dontarius Cowans, to introduce and also share with you their panel. Thanks for joining.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: Thank you so much. Brandy. I’m Danielle Gilmore. I use she/her pronouns, and I’m an associate at Community Science.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: I co-led the Community Advisory Group with Dontarius, and we’re excited to be here today and talk to you a little bit about not only our experience, but share some lessons and some insights.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: Dante, take it away.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Yes. So hello, everyone. My name is Dontarious, and again, as Danielle mentioned, I have also co-led this community advisory group.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Today we have our panelists with us. They can give a short little introduction. We have Diego and Romelia.

Diego Lopez: So my name is Diego.

Diego Lopez: I’m part of the research team.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Romelia, you want to share a bit about yourself?

Ramellea Menns: Sure. Hi! My name is Romelia. And I was a member part of Community Science.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Both Diego and Romelia have been parts of our Community Advisory Group that Community Science, as well as the Connecticut Opportunity Project with Dalio Education, kicked off and facilitated last year.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: Today, we really are focused on what it means to engage youth in ways that are meaningful but also amplify their voice and lived experience while driving real change in community. And so that’s going to be the focus of the webinar today, and we will dive into some practical strategies as well as some lessons learned on how to get more involved in doing that. But again, this is the big question that we want you all to keep in mind as we’re navigating the webinar today.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: So first, I’d like to introduce what’s called the Ladder of Youth Participation. It’s also known as the Ladder of Youth Engagement. This is a framework that we use at Community Science really to kind of underpin the work that we do that involves work with young people.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: It begins with the lower rungs of the ladder that typically involve less participation and less involvement from young people. As you move up the ladder to, you know, rungs 6, 7, and 8, it’s more of a youth-led space. And so it’s really kind of a continuum that allows for us to kind of think through ways to practically engage youth.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: There are 8 levels to this ladder. Again, one being manipulation, the lowest level that typically involves things like young people’s stories being used in ways that either maybe they did not directly involve. They weren’t necessarily given permission to, or it’s very tokenistic in a way. So they’re able to share their lived experience, but not necessarily in a way that amplifies or empowers their voice.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: All the way to the very top, where the space is actually initiated and led with young people, and adults have shared decision-making power. Our Community Advisory Group falls right around rung 6 and a half or so, because this was an adult-initiated space. As the contractors for this work, however, young people were heavily involved in the Community Advisory Group. They were core members. They also had shared decision-making power, veto power, and we really respected their voices and their lived experience.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: So, just to talk a little bit about how we incorporated community voice into the research study that we did. The research study that we were focused on was really interested in understanding the experiences of young people, ages 14 to 26 years old, who were not working or in school, and we were interested in understanding what their interactions had been with societal systems, such as health care, housing, education, criminal justice, and child welfare.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: So we conducted almost 75 interviews with young people across 7 cities in Connecticut, and we were really trying to understand not only how these young people are experiencing disconnection with their community and amongst themselves, but also what the challenges that they may be facing, what successes they’re building towards, as well as considering what their goals are, and how we can provide supports for them to be able to reach what they need.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: And so our questions were really centered around understanding their experiences, their history, and then their plans for the future.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: As a part of this study, we had the Community Advisory Group, which served as an advisory body to our research team. We felt like this was very important, because the focus of the study was to really understand the lived experiences of young people in Connecticut across the State. And so we wanted to bring in a community advisory group that allows for us to understand local context, better understand the lived experiences of young people as well as adults who are working with this population.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: Our Community Advisory Group is comprised of 13 members, 9 young people and 4 adults. The adults and youth serving organizations range from frontline workers to people in executive leadership, all different types of organizations, philanthropic to nonprofit.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: The role of the Community Advisory Group was really to inform our decision making along the way. It served as a checks and balances, so we could run things by them. We sought feedback on recruitment flyers, thought about sense making, how to analyze the data and write it up, and how to represent the stories of young people. The Community Advisory Group allowed us to make sure our findings were culturally relevant and responsive to the communities we were aiming to serve.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Romelia and Diego are part of this group, and they will speak about their experiences. Now, let’s talk about what it was like to put this group into motion, and then you’ll hear from their perspective on what it was like to participate.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Now I’m going to talk about some considerations for those that want to facilitate or build their own community advisory group.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: So, as you can see, we have these four pillars or considerations: power sharing, capacity building, creating inclusive spaces, and overcoming participation barriers. I’ll provide some examples of what we used for our community advisory group.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Starting with power sharing, we have organizational readiness, models of power sharing, and practical approaches. When thinking about power sharing and organizational readiness, you assess your organization’s willingness and readiness to share decision-making power or authority with community members. This involves examining existing structures or policies that may hinder or support power sharing.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: For models of power sharing, think about co-leadership, participatory governance, or shared accountability that all facilitate authentic engagement with your community members.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Practical approaches involve offering concrete steps for embedding power sharing practices within projects to emphasize transparency, trust-building, and recognizing the contributions of all members.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Moving on to capacity building. This is very important for authentic engagement with your CAG members. We have inclusive design, resource accessibility, and sustained support. Inclusive design means helping CAG members meaningfully participate and become effective advocates through training, such as in research skills, data interpretation, storytelling, and public speaking.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Resource accessibility involves providing templates, workshops, and other resources to support learning and ensure equitable access to necessary skills.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Sustained support is about ongoing mentorship or creating spaces where CAG members can practice and refine their skills. For example, we have two CAG members with us today who we’ve been in constant communication with to assist them in refining their skills and sharing their experiences.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: The next consideration is creating inclusive spaces, which includes fostering inclusive and empowering environments, integrating lived experience, and hybrid and virtual engagements. For fostering inclusive and empowering spaces, create guidelines for safe, respectful, and inclusive interactions that acknowledge power dynamics and avoid hierarchy.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Integrating lived experience is something we emphasized with our CAG, where we honored both youth and adults’ perspectives by embedding their viewpoints within our trainings, adjusting discussion topics and formats, and considering the roles they would play.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Hybrid and virtual engagement options are essential, especially with the current climate. We used virtual spaces, breakout rooms, anonymous input options, and moderated discussions to encourage participation from all members. Virtual engagement allows individuals to join from a location where they feel comfortable and secure.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Additionally, we had a CAG member with younger siblings attending the meetings, so we provided activities for the siblings to engage in while meetings were in progress. We understand that childcare can be a barrier, and we wanted to ensure members could fully engage without distractions.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Finally, overcoming participation barriers involved logistical accessibility, financial support for transportation, other incentives, and clear communication channels. Logistical accessibility means addressing practical barriers that members may face, like transportation, flexible scheduling, childcare, or digital access.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: We offered financial support through stipends and covered travel expenses. We also provided meals to show our appreciation and help community members facing financial constraints fully engage in meetings.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Clear communication channels were essential for sharing information, reminders, and updates. We used both text message and email, finding that adults were more responsive to email, while younger members preferred text messages. Tailoring communication this way ensured that we reached all members effectively.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: I’ll now share some benefits, challenges, and lessons learned. For benefits, we gained valuable local insights as CAG members provided unique perspectives and lived experiences that enriched our data analysis.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Engagement and collaboration were strong, with several members actively participating, offering constructive feedback, and providing ideas to guide our approach and represent the Connecticut communities we were serving.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: We showed respect and value by compensating members for their time and effort, fostering a sense of respect and appreciation for their input and commitment to the work.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Capacity building allowed members to develop skills in data interpretation, project planning, and collaborative decision-making, skills that they could apply in future projects or advisory groups.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Lastly, fostering collaborative connections was a huge benefit. We held a data walk with policymakers and community stakeholders, giving CAG members an opportunity to share their expertise and advocate for their communities.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: In terms of lessons learned and challenges, we faced limited influence in some areas, where the CAG served in more of an advisory capacity rather than full decision-making. We also dealt with geographic and logistical challenges since our team was not local to Connecticut, which limited our meeting frequency and led us to rely more on virtual engagement.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Engagement levels varied at times, so we made accommodations to keep everyone involved. Managing resources to address unanticipated needs like childcare, transportation, and meals was crucial but resource-intensive.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Sustained support was another lesson learned. Even after the CAG work concluded, maintaining connections and creating opportunities for members to continue sharing their expertise, like today’s webinar, helped sustain engagement.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: I want to make a couple of quick additions to what you shared, and we already have our first question in the queue. We also encourage others to add questions. We have a few questions for the panelists, but we’re open to yours as well.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: The first question is about us not being local and how we built relationships with the CAG members. Part of our connection came through our funder, the Connecticut Opportunity Project from Dalio Education. Even though Community Science isn’t based in Connecticut, we do place-based work and bring a framework of local understanding and trust-building to every location we work in.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: We also leveraged relationships with local organizations that had established trust with the community, and we used personal and familial connections to the area within our team. This allowed us to operate as a trusted partner, despite not being local.

Romelia Menns: I can definitely say thank you to the leaders on the CAG for pushing me to communicate and making me comfortable enough to open up and participate. I’m usually not a people person, so it was a big help.

Diego Lopez: I echo that. It was like family. The atmosphere you all created made it feel like we were contributing to something real. Every time we got together, it was a good vibe, and everyone felt comfortable being themselves.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: All of that was very intentional. As we planned each meeting, Dontarious and I thought about not only what capacity-building exercises would fit well, but also ways to make the experience engaging and enjoyable. We included food, icebreakers, and games that helped us all get to know each other. Between meetings, we maintained communication through a group chat and individual check-ins, allowing everyone to feel connected even when we weren’t meeting.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: Yeah, and it wasn’t just about logistics. We wanted to create a space where everyone felt they could fully engage and look forward to each meeting. It was my first time in Connecticut, so I was learning about the area alongside everyone else, which helped build a sense of community.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: We were explicit about tailoring our communication to each person’s preferences. Whether it was text messages, phone calls, or emails, we wanted to make sure everyone was communicated with in a way that worked best for them.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Thank you all for sharing your experiences. We’re running out of time, but I want to leave everyone with a closing thought on the biggest success of the CAG. Would each of you like to share your final reflection on what you think was the biggest success?

Ramellea Menns: I think the biggest success was letting it be known. At first, I’d never heard of this group, so being part of it, participating, and seeing it discussed by other organizations felt like we really made an impact. People are talking about it, and it’s getting out there for others to see. I think we succeeded in creating something positive that people are actually discussing.

Diego Lopez: For me, the biggest success was the data walk. I didn’t know we were going to do that, but we went to the Capitol, set up different sessions, and engaged with politicians. That felt powerful. It felt like we were being heard, and it felt like something real was happening. It felt like success, especially with the bill that was passed. It was good to see that we were getting through to people who can make a difference.

Danielle Gilmore (she/her) Community Science: I’d say the biggest success was watching the transformation within the group. In the beginning, people were shy and hesitant to speak. We had to work through moments of silence, which allowed us to build trust and rapport. By the end, we almost had to cut people off because everyone was so engaged and wanted to keep the conversation going. The biggest success for me was seeing people become more comfortable and open up, building relationships not just with us but with each other, creating a family-like atmosphere.

Dontarious Cowans |he/him| Community Science: For me, it was seeing how the CAG members led us in many ways. They provided insights that we hadn’t considered, especially about life in Connecticut. During the data walk, members engaged with politicians and showcased the skills they’d built over time. The relationship-building aspect was powerful, and people looked forward to each meeting. It felt like we had created a family that everyone was eager to be part of.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Thank you all for sharing. And thank you, Romelia and Diego, for being such dedicated CAG members and leaders within the group. Your contributions were invaluable. Also, thanks to Danielle and Dontarious for your leadership in coordinating this effort. Lastly, we’re grateful to our partner and funder, Dalio Education and the Connecticut Opportunity Project, especially Samantha Miller, for their support in making this work possible.

Romelia Menns: I just want to say thank you to everyone who participated, especially Sam, for being so patient with me. I don’t know how I managed to stay on top of everything, but I’m really grateful.

Brandi Gilbert, Community Science: Thank you, Romelia. You deserve all the patience and support. We’re so glad to have had you as part of this journey. And with that, we’ll conclude today’s webinar. Thank you all for joining us, and please feel free to connect with us and check out the resources we mentioned, including the reports and recordings from our previous webinars. Take care, everyone!

Ramellea Menns: Bye!