Community Belonging Audit: A Pilot Diagnostic Tool

Through the Community Belonging Audit, Re-Imagining Migration is exploring how shared diagnostic frameworks can enable cross-sector collaboration on youth belonging. This pilot tool provides educators, administrators, and community members with common vocabulary and criteria for assessing belonging infrastructure—particularly for young people, newcomers, and immigrant-origin individuals.

What We’re Learning About:

Can a shared assessment framework bridge the silos between schools and communities? When teachers, administrators, youth leaders, and residents evaluate the same spaces using the same criteria—accessibility, safety, enrichment opportunities, youth voice, and civic integration—what insights emerge that no single stakeholder would identify alone?

The audit guides users through systematic evaluation of youth spaces and broader community infrastructure, culminating in a visual “belonging map” that documents where belonging exists, where gaps create exclusion, and where underutilized assets could be strengthened. Users are then prompted to share findings across stakeholder groups and develop action plans for collaborative initiatives.

Questions We’re Investigating:

• Does shared diagnosis actually generate shared action, or do stakeholders return to parallel work?
• What kinds of partnerships does this diagnostic reveal or catalyze?
• How do findings vary across different community contexts (urban/rural, varying demographic compositions, different resource levels)?
• When educators and community members see the same patterns, does it shift how they understand their roles and responsibilities?
• What happens when different stakeholders’ assessments conflict?

Who This Is For:

We’re seeking educators, school administrators, and community members interested in piloting this tool and helping us understand what it enables—and what it doesn’t. Ideal pilot partners are comfortable with iteration, willing to provide substantive feedback, and curious about whether systematic community assessment can transform how schools and communities collaborate on belonging infrastructure.

This pilot builds toward Re-Imagining Migration’s broader work developing Belonging Standards and strengthening schools’ capacity to serve as civic infrastructure for all students and families.