Participation, Capacity Building and Empowerment: Lessons learned from the Protección en Construcción (PenC) community research partnership

Key tenets of CBPR include the facilitation of participation and partnership at all levels of the research process, as well as the promotion of capacity-building and empowerment. PenC is a CBPR partnership seeking to build community-university-labor partnership in order to design, implement and evaluate an intervention aimed at preventing falls and silica exposure among Latino construction workers in Lawrence Massachusetts. As part of its design, PenC involves a formative process evaluation that examines measures of participation, relationship enhancement, capacity building and empowerment. The evaluation is participatory and employs a mixed methodology including open-ended interviews, surveys, meeting observations, and document review. Once analyzed, findings from the evaluation are shared with partners in an effort to enhance the partnership process. To date formative work has been completed in the areas of role confusion and communication, and overall evaluation findings indicate a relationship between participation, capacity building and empowerment. Partners are actively sharing project related information in the community. For example, outreach workers report sharing information related to worker rights with people they meet in the community, while union staff explain that new connections to Lawrence-based organizations made through the project, such as the Mayor's Health Task force, have provide valuable information on available health services. Knowledge attained through participation has influenced and enhanced partner work in the community. In this presentation we will describe the process evaluation design, findings, and key project activities found to increase participation, build capacity, and enhance relationships. In addition, overall evaluation findings will be shared.