Building a New Table

Building a New Table: A Community-Centered Handbook for Transformative Social Change

When organizations take on social problems, from school reform to conservation to healthcare disparities, community members are sometimes “invited to the table” to share their insights. But if the table has already been set with institutional assumptions about the issue at hand, the solutions that emerge often have little to do with the people and places they are meant to help. When this is the case, inclusion can only go so far: as Dr. Brittany Lewis argues, it’s time to build a new table.

Drawing on her work as a community researcher and nonprofit consultant, Dr. Lewis developed the Equity in Action (EIA) model as a framework for closing the gaps between communities, researchers, and institutions. By centering the knowledge of the community members who ostensibly benefit from the work of various organizations, EIA makes research questions more relevant and the research process more targeted, getting at the roots of social inequality to find sustainable, impactful solutions.

In Building a New Table, Dr. Lewis guides readers through the steps of EIA: assessing the landscape, building the community action council, co-developing a research approach, data collection, community review, and identifying solutions. Along the way, she highlights the values imbued in each step and the skills needed for success as well as how the model can be adapted for different organizations.

Practical and hands-on, Building a New Table explores each phase of the Equity in Action model through case studies featuring commentary from organizational leaders and staff who have used it to reshape their engagement with the communities they serve. Demonstrating how to ground solutions in lessons from lived experience, this book teaches how authentic community engagement and community-driven research creates reciprocal, generative relationships that can enact real, systemic change.

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Praise for Building a New Table

  • "Dr. Brittany Lewis provides us with a different and much-needed approach centered on a blend of community-based research, systems change, and community-building results. In this model, communities are viewed as qualified authorities on practice-based research and involved in the science of designing and implementing solutions, and institutions are engaged in transformational learning and practice. Building a New Table is our pathway forward."

  • "The Equity in Action (EIA) model is unique in acknowledging the ever-widening gap between researchers and the marginalized communities they study and propose to serve. Traditionally, marginalized communities are acted upon rather than being partnered with or leading the direction of research. EIA puts the focus back on the community by placing the means of research and policy recommendation—goals, methodology, data collection, and data synthesis, but also aligning values; dismantling white supremacist norms; and prioritizing harm reduction, healing, and transparency—in the hands of the people most affected by the conclusions of that research. Initiatives in somatic abolition, social work, diversity and inclusion, and related fields can be transformed by the lens of the EIA model."

  • "Building a New Table provides a compelling approach to accelerate the long-term disruption of social inequality. Dr. Brittany Lewis offers a practical, human-centered research methodology to build trusted relationships that are needed to inform solutions to intractable problems. Centering community voices and building a new table combine to create a powerful strategy that is rooted in the value of lived experiences, deep listening, and the reciprocity inherent in healthy relationships. The book is a must-read for nonprofit, government, and philanthropic leaders who want a new model for research and effecting positive change."

  • "In my work as Minnesota Attorney General, we are constantly searching for new ways to do community-engaged research and policy work. We depend on effective engagement with community. The Equity in Action model contains tremendous insight that will aid the Attorney General’s Office as an organization."

  • "Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity benefited significantly from our work with Dr. Brittany Lewis. Her insights into how to show up in communities of color, as well as how to allow research and data to guide nonprofit, foundation, and government processes, make her an exceptional expert in this work."