Education Programs
Educators, planning teams, and others use SparkMap’s Community Needs Assessment and Map Room to develop and identify needs for educational programming.
Education Programs and SparkMap’s Community Needs Assessment
I recently applied for a grant to fund classes for adults through my non-profit. My team knew from our work in the community that many adults in our service area experience issues around finances, housing, and healthcare. Even so, we struggled to gather the necessary data to substantiate this for our potential funders. We ended up supplementing our application with data from SparkMap, and we were thrilled with the results.
We used the Community Needs Assessment to select our service area from a map and then generate a report showing data on poverty levels, housing, and health issues within our service area. In addition to backing our knowledge with data, the report also introduced us to new issues. For example, we knew that much of our population was uninsured, but we were unaware of prevalent medical conditions, such as Type 2 Diabetes. Armed with this knowledge, we were able to propose courses specifically tailored to these issues.
We have since received our funding, and in addition to courses on financial basics, taxes, and home ownership options, we have been able to partner with a local healthcare center to provide courses on preventing and treating prevalent health conditions. We would not have been able to make this impact without SparkMap’s data.
— June W., Adult Education Program Coordinator, Premium Subscriber
Education Programs and SparkMap’s Map Room
When my nonprofit decided to provide more educational programming for young children and their caregivers, we knew we wanted to target areas in our communities with high poverty levels, high numbers of young children, and low day care enrollment. With some searching online, our team was able to find these data for our county, but it wasn’t specific enough.
SparkMap’s Map Room was the perfect solution! We found data on poverty levels, population age, and day care enrollment rates for ZIP codes and school districts within our community. We then easily pinpointed locations that met our three criteria. The process was remarkably simple and fast, and we especially appreciated the Map Room’s transparency with regards to the data’s sources and update schedules.
Since discovering SparkMap, my team has also made ample use of the “Select Data” Tool, to convert map data into downloadable tables — an invaluable resource!
— Amanda R., Director of Educational Outreach, Free Subscriber