Urban Strategies Council

Urban Strategies Council is a community building support and advocacy organization located in Oakland, California. Founded as a non-profit organization in 1987, the Council's mission is to eliminate persistent poverty by working with partners to transform low-income neighborhoods into vibrant, healthy communities. The Council uses its core skills in service to low-income communities: data and information for action; convening, facilitation & strategic planning; program and tool development; advocacy for policy and systems reform; and capacity building & technical assistance.

The Council serves as a facilitator of comprehensive initiatives, convening residents, stakeholders, policy makers, public agency managers, and service providers to devise and implement comprehensive solutions to a wide range of challenges facing low-income children and families. The Council works with stakeholders to expand services for children and families, improve health, educational, social and economic outcomes, and increase employment and economic opportunities. The Council manages three operating programs: economic opportunity; community safety and justice; and education excellence; and two support programs: research and technology; and community capacity building.

The Economic Opportunity Program supports low-income residents' efforts to increase economic opportunity for their families and communities. We focus on equitable economic development, foreclosure crisis intervention, workforce development, and income and asset development.

The Community Safety & Justice Program works to improve public safety, break the cycle of crime and incarceration in low-income communities and eliminate racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Our work focuses on reentry from incarceration; violence prevention; and community policing.

The Education Excellence Program works to reduce intergenerational poverty by increasing educational achievement. We focus on parent and community engagement, universal afterschool and education research to support action.

The Research & Technology Program supports the work of all of the Council's programs, our partners and the community at-large. We offer customized research, data analysis, program evaluation and mapping and GIS services as well as training in these areas. We also operate online data warehouses and mapping services and provide website and database design services. Our work focuses on increasing access to "democratizing" data, use of data in planning and decision making and increasing access to information technologies among residents and CBOs in low-income communities.

The Community Capacity Building Program supports the work of all of the Council's programs and partners. We focus on building the capacity of organizations and individuals and developing tools to support then to plan and problem-solve to improve conditions in their neighborhoods.