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CTE and Career Readiness in Northwest Arkansas

January 24, 2024

High-quality career and technical education (CTE) programs lead to regional advancement and economic mobility when they align with regional economic needs and provide K-12 students the knowledge, skills and credentials they need for postsecondary success.As in many regions, Northwest Arkansas school districts offer students a range of CTE pathways to pursue based on their interests.To understand the quality and accessibility of those programs in NWA, Insightful Education Solutions convened a local advisory group, examined public enrollment and program quality data and conducted focus groups and surveys with educators and K-12 students. The research was supported with funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

Northwest Arkansas Housing Policy Landscape Assessment Phase One Report

September 9, 2021

In 2020, a team led by Smart Growth America assessed policies that affect the supply and price of housing in Northwest Arkansas and analyzed current capacity and market conditions for a wider range of housing types and price points. Two subsequent reports detail these findings and include recommended changes in policy and practice that could help the region successfully address these challenges. The reports build on Our Housing Future, a call to action published by the Walton Family Foundation in 2019, which found that "housing is becoming increasingly inaccessible to the region's workers, families and seniors." Over the course of the assessment, the research team conducted interviews, analyzed zoning codes and development processes, tested current and future growth projections and developed an understanding of the financial impacts of public and private investments as they relate to housing affordability.

Northwest Arkansas Housing Policy Landscape Assessment Phase Two Report

September 9, 2021

In 2020, a team led by Smart Growth America assessed policies that affect the supply and price of housing in Northwest Arkansas and analyzed current capacity and market conditions for a wider range of housing types and price points. Two subsequent reports detail these findings and include recommended changes in policy and practice that could help the region successfully address these challenges. The reports build on Our Housing Future, a call to action published by the Walton Family Foundation in 2019, which found that "housing is becoming increasingly inaccessible to the region's workers, families and seniors." Over the course of the assessment, the research team conducted interviews, analyzed zoning codes and development processes, tested current and future growth projections and developed an understanding of the financial impacts of public and private investments as they relate to housing affordability.

Millennials, Generation Z, and Northwest Arkansas

June 23, 2021

During the Summer of 2020 and Spring of 2021, in the midst of a global pandemic and protests around racial justice, The Walton Family Foundation embarked upon a study of what young Americans thought about their own futures: their prospects for success, what they want out of life, and what they fear will stand in their way. As part of the Walton Family Foundation's work in its home region, Northwest Arkansas, they also sought to understand how Generation Z and Millennials talk about where they want to live and why - in their own words. During May 2021, they commissioned three focus group discussions with teenagers aged 13 through 18 living in Northwest Arkansas to cover these topics.This report synthesizes the findings of those original nationwide research efforts with the focus groups to better illuminate what kinds of communities Millennials and Generation Zers - particularly those in Northwest Arkansas - seek to create.

Food Over Fear: Overcoming Barriers to Connect Latinx Immigrant Families to Federal Nutrition and Food Programs

December 1, 2020

This report sheds light on why many immigrant families are forgoing vital assistance from federal nutrition and food programs and lifts up recommendations aimed at ensuring that all families and individuals, regardless of immigration status, are nourished and healthy.While the findings of this report are informed by a series of focus groups conducted from November 2019 to January 2020 (prior to the onset of COVID-19), the need to connect immigrant families to nutrition programs is arguably of even greater importance given how COVID-19 is fueling unprecedented food insecurity and ravaging communities of color and immigrant communities at disproportionately high rates due to unique barriers faced by families that include noncitizens.

Hunger in America 2010 Local Report Prepared for Local Report Prepared for The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank

February 1, 2010

This report presents information on the clients and agencies served by The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank. The information is drawn from a national study, Hunger in America 2010, conducted in 2009 for Feeding America (FA) (formerly America's Second Harvest), the nation's largest organization of emergency food providers. The national study is based on completed inperson interviews with more than 62,000 clients served by the FA national network, as well as on completed questionnaires from more than 37,000 FA agencies. The study summarized below focuses on emergency food providers and their clients who are supplied with food by food banks in the FA network.Key Findings: The FA system served by The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank provides emergency food for an estimated 97,000 different people annually.37% of the members of households served by The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank are children under 18 years old (Table 5.3.2).28% of households include at least one employed adult (Table 5.7.1).Among households with children, 82% are food insecure and 52% are food insecure with very low food security (Table 6.1.1.1).45% of clients served by The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank report having to choose between paying for food and paying for utilities or heating fuel (Table 6.5.1).43% had to choose between paying for food and paying for medicine or medical care (Table 6.5.1).32% of households served by The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank report having at least one household member in poor health (Table 8.1.1)The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank included approximately 87 agencies at the administration of this survey, of which 63 have responded to the agency survey. Of the responding agencies, 45 had at least one food pantry, soup kitchen, or shelter.76% of pantries, 55% of kitchens, and 0% of shelters are run by faith-based agencies affiliated with churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious organizations (Table 10.6.1).Among programs that existed in 2006, 85% of pantries, 100% of kitchens, and 67% of shelters of The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites (Table 10.8.1).Food banks are by far the single most important source of food for agencies with emergency food providers, accounting for 59% of the food distributed by pantries, 35% of the food distributed by kitchens, and 30% of the food distributed by shelters (Table 13.1.1).As many as 94% of pantries, 100% of kitchens, and 100% of shelters in The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank use volunteers (Table 13.2.1).