University of Virginia

The University of Virginia's Library and its Institute for the Redress of Inequity through Community Engaged Scholarship will partner with the city of Charlottesville to develop a collaborative Regional Equity Atlas. With the help of the United Way-Thomas Jefferson Area, Adiuvans Foundations, this project team will develop a data and policy tool to promote an equitable community empowered through collective vision and joint ownership. A collaborative Regional Equity Atlas will enable access to evidence and education, policy advocacy and creation, and inter-regional cooperation in the redress of inequity. Project activities will be focused on determining and prioritizing the data needs of community organization related to regional inequity and evaluating tools that can empower nonprofits to gather, use, and share equity data more effectively. This will enhance these capacity for these organization to gather, analyze and share data essential to redressing inequity while exposing data that currently exists but is hard to access. These activities will lead to an open data culture among Charlottesville equity advocates, datasets and research around regional equity, and increased organizational capacity for sharing data within the local nonprofit community. In the wake of the tragic events of August 2017 white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally, this atlas will help this community face the challenge of examining what it means to rededicate itself to equity and diversity.