The Leadership Institute East Palo Alto (LIEP) seeks to educate the community at large on key policy issues and produce a new vanguard of leadership for East Palo Alto (EPA).

The newest of CDI’s signature programs, LIEP aims to promote civic engagement by educating community members regarding key quality of life issues and training them to impact public policy.  In addition, the program seeks to provide local residents with the tools needed to seek local and regional appointed and elected office.  LIEP is a community-driven education and training program, producing original and best practice research on issues facing local communities.   

Call to Action:
Dramatic demographical shifts, massive gentrification, and high rates of crime make LIEP critical to the overall development of East Palo Alto.

FACTS:

• Numerous news articles assert that  Latinos are not assuming elected or  appointed positions in EPA
• Across ethnicities, there are very few 25-40 year olds engaging in public policy formulation.
• Young leaders are not at the table when critical policy decisions are being made.
• Many potential leaders do not fully understand the issues and the process of becoming elected or appointed officials.
• There is very little intergenerational transfer of information among mature and young leadership in EPA.

There is a critical need to develop a new vanguard of young leaders to engage in public policy in EPA.

LIEP draws on the strength of EPA’s active civic history to engage EPA’s overlooked segments and equip them to find and use their civic voice in the community.

Program:
LIEP has two components that seek to create civic engagement critical mass: 1) Issues forums and 2) candidate training.  LIEP is implemented in two-year cycles.  During year one, recruitment, topic issue identification, and organizing partners are identified and community issues forums are conducted.  In year two, workshops and forums will focus on civic participation, advocacy and political leadership. Armed with information from the first year of issue forums, participants will be given information, tools, and networks to apply their knowledge. Current and past elected officials will present on various issues including how to run campaign, organizing constituents, ethics, fundraising, time demands and media relations.

Guided by an advisory committee comprised African American, Latino and Pacific Islander community leaders, great care will be taken to make the curriculum culturally and language inclusive. 

What’s Hot! (Upcoming Projects)
The first topic for LIEP’s issues forums was community-based economic development. LIEP is focusing on understanding the best methods to promote economic development that includes sustainable community ownership of land and businesses. Forums included presentations from the City’s Redevelopment Agency and Start Up, EPA’s small business incubator, as well as examples of community-driven development in Oakland and San Diego, providing residents an insight into the mechanisms of bringing and funding developments to the City as well as encouragement to pursue the various roles they can play in developing their community from within from supporting local business to public policy.
To learn more about what happened at our forums, click here.
Topics for upcoming LIEP issues forums include:

• Housing gentrification
• Power analysis
• City budgeting and resource allocation
• Full representation (election systems)
• Health
• Media and East Palo Alto
• Transportation and Air pollution

Contact:
Valicia Saucedo (Bio)
Director
(650) 327-5846 x314
valicia@cdi-usa.org