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Public Education and Community Outreach

IRP's public education and community outreach include: public speaking; presentations; seminars and symposia; expert testimony; local, regional, and national conferences; and frequent collaboration with community groups and policy makers. As part of its outreach work, IRP holds a variety of forums and conferences on issues related to race and poverty. Recent conferences include the following, several of which have led to journal symposia:

• Welfare-to-Work: What's Working? Where Do We Go From Here? (1998): A one-day conference, developed jointly with Minnesota Public Radio, designed to uncover ways in which welfare reform in Minnesota is succeeding or failing and to articulate the changes that need to occur. A conference report is available online.
  
  
• Tearing Down Walls and Building Lives: A Systemic Approach to Welfare Reform (1997). Focused on identifying and overcoming barriers to effective welfare reform within racially segregated communities of concentrated poverty. The keynote address by Peter Edelman is available online.
  
  
• Not in My Community: Assessing and Addressing Segregated Housing and Education (1997) and Linking Regional and Local Strategies to Create Healthy Communities (1996). Highlighted the importance of both regional and urban strategies in solving problems that affect communities caught at the intersections of racial segregation and poverty. The conference report on Linking Regional and Local Strategies to Create Healthy Communities is available online.