Todo el conocimiento del mundo, desde todos y para todos.

An intergenerational research-practice partnership between CCATE families, students, staff and Penn faculty and doctoral students. After a first year of monthly dialogues and a second year of research training and certification, the team began its own study of postsecondary success: how parents and young people talk about life after high school, and how mental health and school and community violence shape those plans.

In summer 2026 the team met to build composite cases — stories that weave several families’ experiences together so the findings are true to the community while protecting everyone’s identity. The methodological innovations behind this approach were presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting in April 2026.

Now: sharing findings with families and schools, and preparing articles for academic and community audiences.

The adult Research Circle documents immigrant memory in the community’s own words and images. A photovoice project on cultural roots became a two-part podcast series. In spring 2026 a storytelling collaboration with Haverford College students, through the Together with the Humanities program, culminated in a public presentation at Haverford on May 4, 2026.

The Circle has approved the design of La Villa Inmigrante, a 15-episode audio documentary to preserve immigrant memory and challenge the criminalization of migrants, and is preparing a collection of Spanish-language immigration narratives for publication in REVARTE.

Now: publishing the photovoice stories and producing the first documentary episodes.

Students investigate the issues that matter to them and their families, with support from university partners. Past projects have examined school district funding, bilingualism and biliteracy, postsecondary planning, and CCATE’s own waste and recycling systems.

In 2025 the youth team presented at Penn’s Ethnography in Education Research Forum and shared its postsecondary research with an undergraduate class of about 100 students at Penn. In spring 2026 the team extended the postsecondary research with Norristown Area High School students.

Now: an article on the postsecondary research is in the final stage of submission.

Young people were largely missing from the community’s 2026 immigration assembly — parents did most of the talking. So a youth committee from several school districts is organizing an assembly of its own for ages 13 to 25. It is participatory action research from the start: the youth set the agenda, chose the survey instrument, and will write the report, with health professionals, attorneys, universities, school leaders and elected officials invited to listen.

Participants under 18 need a parent or guardian’s authorization. Contact us to take part.

An assembly designed as research: before arriving, community members and allies answered the same survey — in Spanish and in English — revealing where their perspectives differ. On the day, participants met in small dialogue groups that each mixed community members with mental health and legal professionals, and representatives from the school district up to Congress listened in.

The central finding: the community’s first need is emotional health. The resulting report is written to help foundations, nonprofits and local government respond to what families actually need.

CCATE’s Environmental Justice Research Circle and Villanova faculty in geography, the environment and nursing are studying lead in the soil, water and paint of Norristown’s Latinx neighborhoods — starting from the community’s own priorities for assessing and addressing that risk.

Results are returned to households and at community sessions. A paper, “Total and Bioaccessible Soil Lead Contamination in Predominantly Hispanic Neighborhoods around Norristown, PA,” was submitted to Environmental Geochemistry and Health in April 2026, and a three-year air quality study with Villanova and Temple University is under way.