This agreement provides funding to new growth innovation network (provider/recipient) to provide technical assistance and related support to underserved communities across the united states

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, particularly for application sections related to data collection, management, and reporting plans. Additionally, this agreement provides training to improve the post award reporting accuracy for communities who have received an EPA grant 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 outcomes related to environmental health. Finally, the provider will develop and nationally disseminate a 'playbook' that summarizes insights from the provided technical assistance.activities:the activities include community engagement and listening, outreach and capacity building via workshops on program evaluation and evidence-building, training tailored to the data capacity needs of underserved communities, developing community-led data equity plans/projects, and a playbook disseminated nationwide that summarizes insights from the provided technical assistance.subrecipient:no subawards are included in this assistance agreement.outcomes:the anticipated deliverables include community engagement and listening sessions with underserved communities, tailored training for ~30 communities/community organizations, 6 community-led data equity plans/projects developed, and a single playbook created and disseminated that summarizes insights from the provided technical assistance that can help underserved communities who did not participate directly in this training, or require technical assistance after the assistance agreement concludes. The expected outcomes include members of underserved communities becoming local data champions that are capable of advocating for data equity and implementing data plans for EPA grant reporting, increased data fluency and capacity in small and/or underserved communities, and increased beneficiary preparedness with respect to with data, reporting, and evidence-building expertise when applying and/or meeting the reporting requirements for EPA grants. The intended beneficiaries include underserved communities across the united states, particularly those communities not located in an area already being served by another prepared provider.