The work of Dodd Impact’s Community Outreach and Engagement is built on the belief that, in a socially-just society, everyone’s human rights are respected, protected, and promoted.  Towards this vision, we engage with coalitions and organizations in Connecticut and the Northeast, dedicated to social justice programming and policy-making, to address fairness and equity in healthcare, employment, education, housing, criminal justice, and more.  Working collaboratively, our office endeavors to engage community partners in collective action to address structural inequities in our communities. We do this through resource sharing, joint educational programming including panel discussions, exhibits, workshops, fairs, and community fora, among other activities. Together, we learn from each other, align our interests, and integrate our actions to help achieve systems-level change.

Our current priorities are the Democracy and Dialogue Initiative (DDI), Justice Forward Initiatives, as well as Partnerships. Read more about these initiatives below:

Democracy and Dialogues Initiative

The Democracy & Dialogues Initiative (DDI) is a central program advancing our Community Outreach and Engagement work.  This program, often based in the “Encounters” dialogue methodology, provides for structured public dialogues on complex and/or controversial topics. Student Fellows play a central role in DDI and this Initiative also has partnered for programming with the Undergraduate Student Government at UConn.

The Encounters dialogue methodology is dedicated to fostering unexpected conversations around divisive issues and obscure knowledge. The program dives deeply into subjects that are of interest to the Greater Hartford community through facilitated, small-group dialogues followed by a question-and-answer style conversation with UConn faculty and community partners. Readings are provided beforehand to encourage informed and informal dialogue within conversations that often prove to be polarizing, and thus unproductive. Read more about The Encounters Series through Humanities for All.

Justice Forward Initiatives

Our Justice Forward Initiatives are aimed at improving the equity and fairness of Connecticut’s criminal justice system. Central to this work is understanding the intersections of poverty, race, and other structural inequities with the criminal justice system.

• Connecticut Collaborative on Poverty Criminal Justice and Race
  • One State One Film
  • Reentry Simulations
  • Live Performances and Community Conversations
  • Safety and Justice for All Partnership Initiative (program results/next steps)
• Vocational Village (CT DOC)

Institute for Municipal and Regional Policy IMRP