CBEL convenes Salem-area community members & leaders committed to helping families and neighborhoods thrive.
About us
The Community Business and Education Leaders (CBEL) Collaborative is a group of community members and leaders focused on building community resilience that strengthens families and supports world-class education in the Salem-Keizer School District.
The group meets every other month to discuss real community challenges and listen to the voices of lived experience in the neighborhoods they support. This group supports the Neighborhood Family Councils and Collective Impact Initiatives.
Join our email list to receive our monthly newsletter and invitations to our upcoming CBEL Collaborative Gatherings!
NEXT CBEL COLLABORATIVE GATHERING
Recent Collaborative Feedback
“[It was my] first time attending and I really enjoyed the space and the conversation.”
““Es muy importante contar con estos eventos, donde se une toda la comunidad para hablar de problemas en comun y pensor en hacer un plan para resolvo diches un problemos.”
“I’m so happy to see and hear that we are all here for the same reason. I’m so happy I found out about this. I have hope for our future and community!”
“[I] really enjoyed the space & conversations. Nothing will get done without community. Together we can!”
“The panel was extraordinary! Real people. Real possibilities. Real community.”
“I’m always inspired when I come to these meetings!”
What we do
Based on research from George Washington University’s Center for Community Resilience, we believe there are three key ingredients to community resilience:
Authentic Community Engagement
Interconnected Systems
Equity
From innovative social complexity data gathered by the Oregon Health Authority and Oregon Pediatric Improvement Project, we know that more than 40% of youth and young adults in Salem-Keizer who receive health care through the Oregon Health Plan experience three or more social complexity indicators. Youth who experience three or more social complexity indicators experience higher risks for negative health outcomes, costs of care, and long-term social and medical health disparities. Complexity data and its analysis is designed to provide early identification of youth with multiple health-related needs and risk factors. Through population assessments and risk stratification, complexity data helps us identify opportunities and predict future population outcomes using a population-level approach to mitigating adverse experiences, or complexity indicators. The aim is to leverage complexity findings by analyzing system-level data to early-identify priority populations.
This is what Jack Shonkoff, Director of Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, calls a “pileup” of adversity that no child or family should be expected to overcome on their own. That’s where we—the Community Business & Education Leaders—come in.
Shonkoff stresses the importance of building community resilience, noting it’s the community’s job to “build a bridge” over this pileup of adversity. Taking this idea, along with the aforementioned key ingredients of community resilience, CBEL has imagined its work as building a bridge over the pileup of childhood adversity, or complexity factors. The CBEL bridge consists of five main “building blocks,” as seen below.
Social complexity data source: Oregon Health Authority (OHA), Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), Oregon Pediatric Improvement Partnership (OPIP). Child Health Complexity: A statewide Summary Report. 2018-2022. Analysis conducted by Oregon Pediatric Improvement Partnership, December 2022.
Neighborhood Family Councils (NFCs) are the keystone of the CBEL bridge. CBEL encourages and supports the development of these councils, responsible for listening to the voices of their neighbors and promoting Strengthening Families Protective Factors in their neighborhood.
CBEL encourages and supports three local nonprofits dedicated to Collective Impact, which is the alignment and integration of the actions of private and public health care, human services, education, and housing organizations in order to achieve population and systems level results.
CBEL utilizes Results-Based Accountability (RBA)—a data-driven, common sense decision-making process for supporting Collective Impact and achieving population-level results.
CBEL aims to promote Racial Justice and Reconciliation.
Building a strong CBEL Collaborative enables proper support of all other foundational areas.
What’s behind our work?
Learn more about the frameworks behind our mission, structure, and work.
Strengthening Families Protective Factors
Backed by research from the Center for the Study of Social Policy, these five protective factors have demonstrably shown more positive outcomes for young children and their families, as well as a reduction in child abuse and neglect.
National BCR Pair of Aces
CBEL belongs to the Oregon chapter of Building Community Resilience—a national network and learning collaborative. The Pair of Aces is a BCR-developed tool that demonstrates the relationship between adversity within a family (Adverse Childhood Experiences) and adversity within a community (Adverse Community Environments).
Results-Based Accountability
RBA is a “disciplined way of thinking and acting to improve entrenched and complex social problems.” CBEL uses the decision-making process to help improve its efficiency, evaluate opportunities for support, and track outcomes. You can view the RBA scorecards for each of our focus areas here.
Outward Mindset
Developed by the Arbinger Institute, outward mindset is a way of thinking and interacting that places emphasis on the humanity of others. An incredible change occurs when a shift in mindset causes us to begin seeing people as people, as opposed to obstacles, vehicles, or irrelevancies in our own lives.
Collective Impact
Collective impact occurs when groups and individuals purposefully collaborate and share information to solve a complex community problem. CBEL intentionally supports three Collective Impact Initiatives in the Salem area.
Racial Justice & Reconciliation
Adapted from the Reconciliation Australia project by the Center for Community Resilience, we created a Racial Justice & Reconciliation Committee dedicated to placing every decision, initiative, and meeting through a lens of equity.
Councils & Committees
-
Lead Contact:
Rick Newton
rlnblue2@gmail.com -
Lead Contact:
Chris Barber, Curandi chris.barber@curandi.org -
Ashley Russell, CBEL Assistant Director ashley.russell@curandi.org