My experiences at APPRISE allowed me to reflect and expand upon what I learned as a student of public policy. I joined APPRISE after completing a Master of Public Policy with a focus on social policy. When I first joined APPRISE, I thought that that we were an environmental policy organization. What I quickly found out was that our work operates at the intersection of environmental justice and economic equity. It is within these fields that I felt truly engaged in mission-driven work.

In thinking about the relationship between my social policy studies and my work at APPRISE, there is one important overarching theme: the importance of stakeholder engagement. Throughout the projects that I worked on at APPRISE, engaging stakeholders and learning from them about how our products and services can improve was a unique experience.

One of my roles at APPRISE is to oversee the development of and train users on how to use the Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) Performance Management Website. CSBG is a federal block grant that serves as a funding source for states/territories and local nonprofit organizations to alleviate poverty from their own communities. The Performance Management Website houses data that the CSBG network reports to the federal government about their program funding, services, and outcomes to promote data accessibility.

While training users on the website, I had the opportunity to meet CSBG state and local administrators across the country. I held training sessions with individual states and regions, asking them questions about what data is important to them. I learned that many states are currently focused on providing housing assistance to low-income households and that now, as extra funding sources provided during the COVID-19 pandemic are no longer available, how states/territories are trying to maximize the impact of their CSBG funds.

This is the first webinar that I presented to train state and territory CSBG administrators on how to use the Performance Management Website.

I have perhaps learned the most from the CSBG Performance Management Working Group, a group of CSBG program administrators whom I first met in December of 2023 in Washington, D.C. These individuals showed me what it is like to administer CSBG and how the Performance Management Website can assist their everyday work. They taught me what questions they want to answer and what questions they get asked from their own stakeholders. In speaking with these individuals each month, my understanding of the impact that the website can have on their jobs grew. Additionally, I have learned so much from them about how to think about anti-poverty programs. Their commitment to this work has inspired me to continue to pursue a career related to economic equity.

David Carroll often says that he learns something new every day from the people we work with, even after decades of working in this field. This is the power of meeting with LIHEAP and CSBG stakeholders across the country. It is an experience that I gained through training state administrators on how to use the CSBG Performance Management Website and hosting meetings with the CSBG Performance Management Working Group. I will carry forward the lessons that they taught me about the importance of this work.