Named after the Zulu expression meaning 'to rise.'
This is where stories are shared and truths are told, no matter the circumstances. We do not sanitize findings to make them more palatable. We report what communities tell us — and we stay until something changes.
Vuka's research, policy tools and resources library fortify leaders and communities to protect our most vulnerable families from the impact of five global disruptors: climate change, wealth inequality, hyper-urbanization, automation and pandemics.
These aren't abstract threats. They compound. They concentrate harm among people who already face the steepest headwinds — and they require an entirely different kind of data to address.
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little." — Franklin D. Roosevelt
Vuka envisions a United States where the people closest to our most pressing challenges have a genuine seat at the table — shaping the research, informing the policy and directing the resources that affect their lives.
When communities and institutions work from the same trusted data, better decisions follow for everyone. Not as charity. Not as consultation theater. As a fundamental redesign of how knowledge gets produced and used.
"Epistemic injustice harms people in their capacity as knowers — and the harm compounds when institutions make decisions without the knowledge only communities can hold." — Miranda Fricker, adapted
Logic alone does not move systems. Evidence plus community trust plus institutional will — that is the equation. Our theory of change names each step clearly and holds us accountable to it.
We have unearthed data that includes and prioritizes those perspectives most disregarded or lost in traditional research practices — the lived expertise that no survey instrument was ever designed to capture.
We can honestly name what is happening to communities under pressure from the five global disruptors and understand why conventional interventions keep falling short of the mark.
We can imagine and innovate new solutions — ones with real community ownership — that address root causes rather than symptoms, and that institutions will actually implement because communities helped design them.
Traditional research isn't just failing marginalized communities — it's producing the wrong answers. The U.S. Gini coefficient rose from .787 in 1989 to .852 in 2019 while the people experiencing that squeeze remained statistically invisible. From 1970 to 2018, the Black-white income gap grew by nearly $10,000 — yet workforce programs keep treating structural racism as a skills deficit.
When institutions make decisions without the right data, they spend more and solve less. Billions in public and philanthropic resources get misallocated toward interventions that address symptoms rather than causes. Solving the data problem isn't just a matter of equity. It's the difference between policy that works and policy that wastes.
Most research on marginalized communities follows a costly pattern: institutions extract data, publish findings and disappear. Billions in investment keep flowing toward interventions that treat symptoms rather than causes — not because leaders lack commitment, but because the methodology was never designed to surface the right answers.
Vuka does it differently. Our Community Research Councils don't advise — they govern. Rooted in W.E.B. Du Bois's 1899 methodology of training community members as researchers, this model transforms both the quality of data and the trust required to collect it honestly. When communities and institutions work from the same trusted data, decision-makers stop guessing and start solving.
"The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line. The problem of the Twenty-First is what happens when that line intersects with every other fracture in our social fabric at once."
Every recommendation we produce includes a responsible actor, concrete success metrics, realistic timelines and estimated costs — tiered by urgency, from the non-negotiables within 6-12 months to the systemic shifts over 2-5 years. That level of specificity isn't bureaucratic. It's the only way recommendations actually get implemented.
Nothing stays behind a paywall. Full reports, assessment tools and policy briefs are freely accessible because the communities who made this research possible deserve to use it. Knowledge extracted from communities belongs to communities.
Our work doesn't end at delivery. We stay at the table through implementation — convening governance leaders and nonprofits who rarely coordinate and tracking progress against agreed-upon metrics. Through our Global American Cities Project, cities tackling similar challenges share what works in real time so every community benefits from collective learning.
We measure success by policies changed, resources reallocated and communities empowered. Not downloads. Not citations. Not conference invitations. Results.
We are ready to build that with partners who are serious about results.
We design research processes that surface what traditional methods miss — the knowledge held by people living inside systems, not just observing them. That means longer timelines, deeper trust-building and a willingness to follow the data wherever it leads.
Our Community Research Councils hold binding decision-making authority over research design, data interpretation and resource recommendations. This isn't consultation. It is a structural redistribution of epistemic power — and it produces better research.
We don't submit a report and move on. We track implementation, convene stakeholders who rarely share a table and use the Global American Cities network to ensure every community's learning accelerates outcomes for the next one.
Whether you're a philanthropy seeking evidence-based deployment strategies, an elected leader building toward more responsive governance or a municipality confronting the compound pressure of the five global disruptors — Vuka is built for this work. Let's begin.