This agreement provides funding to the university of massachusetts dartmouth (provider/recipient) to provide technical assistance and related support to underserved communities in and around…

This agreement provides funding to the university of massachusetts dartmouth (provider/recipient) to provide technical assistance and related support to underserved communities in and around massachusetts and EPA region 1. The provider will deliver data competency related training, education, and technical assistance to help underserved communities develop data competency, evaluation capability, and reporting capacity within their organizations. These capacity building activities will improve the underserved communities' application quality to EPA grants and state revolving funds (SRF), particularly for the application sections related to data collection, management, and reporting plans. Additionally, this cooperative agreement provides technical assistance to improve the post award reporting accuracy for communities' who have received an EPA grant or SRF but may lack the necessary data related competency or evaluation capacity to fulfill the reporting and evaluation requirements. This increased performance relating to data competency and reporting will enable underserved communities to better communicate how awarded EPA grants improved the environmental health related outcomes.activities:the activities include community engagement, workshops on collecting data/using data/reporting data/data evaluation, training tailored to the data capacity needs of organizations in the underserved communities, and 1 on 1 technical assistance with data collection and dissemination.subrecipient:the anticipated subrecipient activities include conducting workshops, at least 8 focus groups, and multiple interviews. The expected outcomes include increased participation in the provider's activities, improved trainings that incorporate community feedback, and reaching historically underserved communities that typically DON't apply for/receive EPA grants. The intended beneficiaries include underserved communities in EPA region 1.outcomes:the anticipated deliverables include developing data competency technical assistance related to EPA programs and state revolving funds, assisting approximately 20 underserved communities per year with personalized technical assistance after outreach/community engagement, at least 3 workshops on building logic models, survey design, qualitative protocol development, and program evaluation, initiating and assisting 5 'pilot' communities (spread out in region 1) to launch a community engagement plan and receive support on post-award data collection, and numerous 1:1 consultations with underserved communities to improve data competency. As described on page 4 of the workplan, the expected outcomes include improved data reporting and dissemination among beneficiaries, increased compliance with EPA's reporting requirements for beneficiaries, and increased data fluency/capacity in historically underserved communities. The intended beneficiaries include underserved communities in EPA region 1.