Equity-Profile-Builder

Through their partnership, PolicyLink and the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE) released the National Equity Atlas in 2014. As a first-of-its-kind data tool, the Atlas provides data on 34 equity indicators for 301 geographies. The Atlas database has also been used to create comprehensive "Equity Profiles" in a dozen sites across the U.S. Through our process, we’ve found that the “profiles” are incredibly useful tools for bringing diverse community partners together to make a powerful, data-backed case and build political will for equity policy solutions.

For example, Fairfax County equity advocates used the profile to convince the county and the school board to adopt a “One Fairfax” resolution to develop and implement a data-driven racial and social equity policy.

Users have requested the ability to create their own profiles, tailored to their communities and campaigns. Through this Opportunity Hack, we aim to create a simple tool where users can pull charts from the Atlas and add their own stories to create an equity snapshot of their regions — empowering them to be able to tell their own stories and strengthening their advocacy efforts.

Inspiration

The challenges faced by the Policy Link team to go through the huge statistical data and creating the policy document for the consumers was a tedious work. The days and weeks spent to create just a single portfolio only lasted until there was editions suggested by the consumer, and it was difficult to get the editable version of the paper-based portfolio. This is where we decided to take on the challenge to create a tool to automate this process and help make everyone's lives easier!

What it does

We implemented a multi-page app which reads and filters all the data from the existing National Equity Atlas website and helps create an editable document for the policy makers.

How I built it