- I want to welcome you to tonight's panel discussion.
This is, I believe,
the last Monday night lecture of the summer.
The title is "Promoting Representative Leadership Structures
"in Social Justice and Social Service Agencies."
We've got an interesting format laid out.
The panel's gonna introduce themselves
in terms of their organization, their role,
how they got to the role they are in
in the organization they are in.
And we have some questions that we've prepared
to really have the panel interact with each other,
and then really invite questions from you as well.
The intent really is to recognize that,
if there really is a commitment to diversity,
if there's a commitment to representing the communities
that you are in the business of serving,
then you really need to have a high level of intention
about doing that.
It doesn't just happen.
We really need to recognize that we really need
to get beyond just appearing diverse
and actually being diverse.
By diverse, I use words like inclusive, accountable,
words like that, accountable to the organization,
to the folks who are the reason
your organization is in business.
The other thing that we want to make clear
is that there frequently are distinctions we make
about distance between the folks who are doing the serving
and the folks who are being served.
Really, that, in a lot of ways, can be a false distinction.
So, folks who are from the communities they serve
frequently also are working in the communities they serve,
and are folks who may very well have been served
by the organizations they are now part of.
We're really trying to also acknowledge that the distances
between us really are maybe more apparent and real,
and that some of what the panel will talk to are
how that plays out in the real life of organizations
that are in the business of doing both services
and promoting social justice.
So without any further ado,
I'm gonna introduce the panel.
and then I'm gonna gracefully get off the stage
and really allow the process to begin.
The folks up here are,
reading from my left to my right --
I would always start on my left --
the first panelist is Arlenis Morel,
who emigrated to the United States from Venezuela in 1992,
and is a long-time resident
of the Bushwick neighborhood in Brooklyn.
She became involved in Make the Road New York
through her mother,
who served on the organization's board of directors.
Arlenis will talk a little about how she got
to the organization through her mother.
In 2003, Arlenis joined Make the Road New York
as an office administrator,
and has since had a bunch of positions in the organization.
She now serves as the Director of Operations
for the organization and is responsible for maintaining
overall day-to-day operations in its Brooklyn,
Queens, Long Island and Staten Island offices.
She has an associates degree
from Kingsboro Community College and is a graduate
of Coro's Immigration Civic Leadership program
for emerging immigrant leaders in the city and state.
She's currently involved in the community change project
that consists of creating better outreach strategies
to engage community members to actively participate
in public policy debates and decision making
at all levels of government,
building their capacity to be agents of change.
The next person across is Stan Holbrook,
who graduated from the Heinz School
of Public Policy and Management
of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh
with a master's degree in Public Management.
In addition, he has an MBA in International Business
and Strategic Planning from Point Creek College,
and has a master's degree in Theological Studies
from the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary.
He's now the president and CEO
of Three Rivers Center for Independent Living,
which empowers people with disabilities
to have and live self-directed, independent lives.
He's also extremely active in the community,
serving on committees and boards such as
the American Society of Aging and the
National Council for Independent Living.
He was instrumental in advancing and creating NCILS,
the Council of Independent Living's diversity initiative,
and has chaired that committee for eight years.
He's also the vice-chair of the governor-appointed
statewide Independent Living Council,
and president of the
Pennsylvania Council of Independent Living.
Dora Robinson,
way over there on the other side of the table,
has been president and chief executive officer of United Way
of the Pioneer Valley since October of 2009.
Before joining United Way,
Ms. Robinson served more than 25 years
in human service administration,
including 18 years as president and CEO
of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Family Services Inc.
in Springfield.
She holds a bachelor's degree from Cornell
and a master's degree in Social Work Administration
from the University of Connecticut,
and has completed graduate studies in Social Work
at Smith College School for Social Work.
Dora Robinson is also an adjunct instructor
at both Springfield College
and our very own Smith College School for Social Work.
So, those are the panelists.
Our moderators are Cindy Lys, Dina Pasalis.
I'm gonna turn it over to them
and I think we're in for a very interesting evening.
(applause)
- Okay, so to start off our panel for this evening,
we wanted to have each of the panelists take
about 10 minutes or so to introduce themselves
in their agency context,
including how they got to their leadership positions,
and also how did mentors factor into their ability
to move within an organization.
We'll let you guys go for 10 minutes each on that,
and then, we'll go more
into the question and answer part of it.
- Hi everyone, my name is Arlenis Morel.
I serve as a director of operations for
Make the Road New York.
It's a non-profit organization,
and we have four different offices in Bushwick, Brooklyn;
Jackson Heights in Queens; Port Richmond in Staten Island;
and Brentwood, Long Island.
We have currently 13,000 members
who pay dues to the organization.
We do advocacy through education,
and we provide legal services to our members.
We also have an education program
where we teach adult literacy
and we teach GED classes.
We also have a youth program for youth
between the ages 13 through 21.
We provide provide legal services,
but we do it only to active members.
The way that we consider active members is
the people have to participate in the organization
in different meetings that we have.
The way that we do it is that we teach people
how they can make change in the community,
and how could they change the policies that they don't like.
The way that I became involved in the organization
when I was 16, my mom was one of the first 15 members
of the organization,
and she used to go to welfare centers
to protest against the fact that they didn't have
bilingual services for people that didn't speak English.
The news gathered the stories,
and my mom would come up on TV,
and it would be embarrassing for me.
(laughter)
So, I would tell my mom,
"Mom, they're going to cut off your welfare services,
"your food stamp services, if they keep seeing you there."
And, she used to tell me, "Well, that's my right.
"I have the right to protest and I have the right
"to go and tell them that they need to provide me
"with services in Spanish because I don't understand
"anything they're saying."
And I used to hate Make the Road.
I used to say,
"Hey, get off TV.
"My friends are making fun of me.
"You're always there with a sign or something."
When I graduated college,
they had a part-time position in Make the Road.
My mom was serving on the board of directors
at the organization.
Our organization's board of directors is
more than 50% with members of our organization.
At that time she was serving there,
and she told me about a position they had and I said,
"Hell no, I'm not going to work there, that's embarrassing.
"You guys are always making noise.
"You guys are always on TV.
"You guys are always trying to fight the government.
"Why do you want to do that?"
I didn't have any knowledge of organizing,
I didn't know anything that my community was going through.
I was working at the Board of Ed at that time
and I was unhappy.
I was working 40 hours a week, nine to five
just moving papers around.
And I said, well you know --
the organization was two blocks away from my house
and because I wanted to save on metro cards,
I applied for the position (laughter) as a receptionist.
And, just a week after I started working at Make the Road,
I fell in love with the organization.
I fell in love with the services
that they were providing members,
seeing people coming through the doors with problems
and us telling them, "Well, we're not Legal Aid,
"but we are trying to make a difference.
"We're trying to help the community in a different way.
"If you want to become a member, you have to pay."
Back then, it was $100.
They would pay $10 to become a member,
and they would have two years to pay the remainder $90.
And, just seeing people with problems,
nobody comes through the door saying,
"I want to be part of social justice.
"I want to change the world".
Nobody does that.
When I started working just as a receptionist,
I realized that people needed to be --
they needed to come together to understand
what we were doing.
And after two years, I became an office manager.
Two years after, I became the director of HR,
then, Director of Finance.
Then, they moved me to Director of Operations.
so I've been climbing up.
That's the reason why I'm there.
It's because of the members that we serve,
the communities that we serve,
and the work that we do everyday to change lives.
- Hi, I'm Stan Holbrook.
We have a similar story, except my mom wasn't involved.
(laughter)
I believe I never intended to be in this field
or work for justice even though I was growing up in a time
when there was a lot of injustices.
I said, "I'm getting my MBA
"and I'm getting a high-powered job."
Well, you know that never happened.
I moved through the ranks of working
with public housing residents,
building community mobilization,
developing 501(c)(3)s.
And, it's always someone giving me a chance,
and what I had to do with that chance
is learn and make that chance good.
What happened in 2000,
I saw an ad about
Three Rivers Center for Independent Living.
I said, "I don't know what kind of organization it is,"
but it said Assistant Executive Director.
Now, I was fine where I was.
I said, "Let me go apply."
I went to apply,
and with conversations with the director then at that time,
first, it was very interesting to me
that I could never tell over the phone
but he was visually impaired.
And while there was construction going on,
he knew how to navigate all through this construction
to get to his office and back, and we talked.
In our talks I said, "This might be good."
Then, he said something that scared me,
"Well, we need kind of a savior."
I'm like, "What do you mean?"
"Well, the organization's divided because
"the last lady that left in this position."
I said, "Oh no, I'm not gonna do this."
So, he's asking for writing samples and everything,
and I was purposely being late.
Well, he was pretty persistent,
so he waited, and I gave him my samples,
and I got the job as assistant executive director.
He gave me liberty, and mentorship is important.
I will say that he was an African-American,
but he mentored me because he saw
I had something that maybe I didn't see.
In 2004, when he left, he said,
"I believe you're ready to go be president."
Well, the board did a national search and I said,
"I might not win this one because they have people coming
"from all over the country at this time."
But, I did get that position and it was executive director,
but they made it president and CEO.
Now, right before that --
and I'm gonna talk a lot about the
National Council for Independent Living.
It's a membership organization
where I'm the diversity chair --
he literally pushed me into an election.
I didn't want to do it 'cause nobody knew me
and it seemed like it was a good old boys club.
Finally at election time, I went on and did it.
Because of his push, I won.
Because of that push, I'm a president and CEO.
What we do is we work
to empower people with disabilities.
to live self-directed, meaningful lives
in the setting of their choice, which means,
hey, if you don't want to be in a nursing home,
we will happily transition you out and make sure
your health and safety needs are taken care of,
and there are a number of services with that.
So, with that president and CEO,
I had another responsibility at the NCIL diversity chair,
and I will have plenty of time to talk about that
when we go through these questions.
Thank you.
- Good evening. Can you hear me?
Okay, my journey is very similar to both of these panelists.
I often say when I introduce myself
that I'm a child of the '60's.
I grew up in the midst of every kind of social movement
that you're studying or that you might even be aware of,
and perhaps some of you might have even participated
in this age of movements.
And it was an extraordinary period growing up
as a little black girl in Elmira, New York,
in a very small community,
where, by appearances, racism did not exist
because there was only two high schools.
You either went to the south side high school
or Elmira Free Academy,
so, more often than not, we were forced into integration
by virtue of the limited opportunities.
Growing up, I really didn't have a sense of being poor,
or being disenfranchised, or being discriminated against,
having grown up in a family of southern folks
that had migrated from the south to the north
looking for opportunity and found great opportunity.
As a result, I lived a very, I would say, charmed life.
It was only after I started growing up in the mid '60's
in the civil rights movement that people said
things were not right.
The long and the short is that when the NAACP
was established in my little town,
I took an interest in community work and also,
because I was very active with my church with my mom,
I was very active in community work.
Then, my first job was with EOP, Economic Opportunity,
which again was community work.
And so, I found myself very early on
as a community agent and a representative.
I had a mouth, a big mouth.
Big mouth, right Rachel?
I know you're listening. (laughter)
I had a mouth on me and that mouth I used
to really speak on behalf of, even as a kid,
kids that appeared to be less fortunate.
Let's speed up.
Sixty, forty years, fifty years later,
here I am as the president-CEO
of a very traditional organization, the United Way.
The United Way of Pioneer Valley is 90 years old,
actually 91 years old.
I was hired four years ago, so I was the first woman,
the first woman they hired in the 86-year history
of this organization.
Now, in many ways, I should be jumping for joy.
But over my career, I was often the first,
and I think I was the first in many, many situations
because of this mouth,
that I had an amazing way of representing,
and advocating, and speaking my mind and --
Josh is out there and he knows that --
finding myself in positions of community leadership
even when I wasn't looking for it.
So how did I get here?
Sometimes I wonder.
I mean, I didn't take a step back and say,
"I want to be the president-CEO of a United Way."
In fact, if you had asked me that even 10 years ago,
15 years ago, I would say, "That's not happening."
My journey has been very interesting from direct services,
and as Fred noted, I started out here in my graduate work
because I had such a love of working
with adolescents and families,
and I thought at that time that I would be a therapist.
That's what I craved.
That's what I wanted.
That's what I desired.
But as life circumstances, I had to take a break,
and it was during that break I took a job
as a program director
for a little small organization in Springfield --
we were living in Amherst at the time --
that worked with adolescents,
youngsters that were involved in the juvenile court system.
I found myself in a position
where I could really develop programs and services
that I felt were really appropriate for that population.
So, I fell in love with this notion
that I could really make a difference,
not just as a direct service provider,
but by crafting services, and the rest is history.
By the time I was ready to return to graduate school,
it just made sense for me to pursue my interests
in administration and community planning and development,
but I've never lost my love for direct services.
My career has really been focused on how to develop,
how to integrate these wonderful disciplines
that are represented in the social work profession.
It's not an either-or for me.
It's all and that we all have to find our place,
but at the end of the day,
we're all in a position where we can be an agent of change.
And I'll tell you, it's very different than a change agent.
An agent of change is an advocate.
It can be a director, it can be a volunteer.
We're agents of change and that's been consistent
across the board.
Even in my four years at the United Way,
I would imagine that I'm perceived,
certainly on a local level,
and then certainly on a state level,
and on a national level, with diversity inclusion,
as an agent of change.
I represent the new leadership of United Ways
across this country because we can no longer
just simply fund raise, raise dollars and allocate.
We really have to come up with solutions in communities
that are sustainable.
Over dinner, I said I would give you money
if I was in New York because those are the kinds
of community solutions that are sustainable in the end,
enabling people to represent their needs,
to strengthen and build their communities in their capacity,
and to advocate for themselves.
That's where our investments have to go.
Certainly, if you went on our website,
you'll see that we're doing a lot of community convening,
and leading and funding.
That's our new role.
So, I'm an ideal new United Way leader
and I'm pleased to be there,
although I'm tired, and I'm gonna retire.
As I was saying earlier,
some people have asked me this morning,
"What are you going to do?"
And I said, "I just want to be a social worker."
(laughter)
- I just want to work with my children,
and that's exactly what I'm going to do when I retire,
Is to go back to what I love
because that's what keeps me connected.
That's what energizes me to continue on this journey.
It's not an easy journey so, thank you.
- So we'll transition now into Dina and myself
asking questions of the panelists.
We'll do that for about 30 minutes,
and then, we'll open up to questions from the audience,
so keep them percolating as we discuss.
One of the first questions we had was asking each of you
if and how the clients of the organization or agency are
incorporated into the leadership structure.
I know, Arlenis, you spoke to this for a bit,
but we wanted to pose that to all of the panelists
to talk about specificially.
- One thing about Centers for Independent Living,,
they are mandated as part of the Rehab Act
to have 51% of their staff
and board to be consumers,
or people with disabilities, cross disabilities.
We have to have consumers as part of our board of directors.
We also have to have 51% of our leadership
as consumers, also, or people with disabilities.
That is a mandated thing.
We have to do it, and so we do it.
I think the other thing that is my personal goal is
to not only have consumers but to really look at --
when you look at disability,
there's sub-populations, sub-cultures,
and we try to get as many different folks
with different disabilities involved,
if not at the board level,
at least at an advisory committee level,
so we can ensure that we're providing what is needed
to help them have a quality of life like everyone else.
- Just recently, the last couple years,
I've been working with my colleagues
from Hampshire United Way and Franklin County United Way,
along with what they call the
Sustainable Communities Corridor,
which is a regional initiative
between Massachusetts and Hartford.
The long and the short is part of that initiative
involved mobilizing and engaging communities,
neighborhoods, people to participate
in a conversation about quality of life issues.
What was really interesting is that we went out
to various communities, both rural communities,
and certainly the urban communities
to talk about those things that people really cared about.
Consistently across the board,
whether it's the hill towns up in Hatfield,
or Belchertown, or Holyoke, or Brimfield, Monson,
is that people cared about education, housing,
transportation, and then, of course, environmental issues
were really perking.
Even in the urban communities,
people are beginning to understand
that there are environmental issues,
especially in poor communities,
that are making them sick and their children sick.
So, it was education, housing,
and certainly work opportunities.
So, while we're not a direct-service organizaiton,
we're always looking out for opportunities
to engage in conversations with the very people
that receive the services that we fund,
and also trying to understand the needs of communities
so that it's no longer this little cookie-cutter
kind of approach to funding.
But, every community has a unique set of circumstances
and needs that have to be considered,
in terms of funding and providing resources.
- At Make the Road New York,
we make sure that at least 50% of our board of directors
comes from our members.
The way that we do it is that we have elections
every three years, and members can participate.
One of the requirements is that they have
to pay their membership dues in full.
They have to be leaders of their community
that they're participating in.
It's real elections.
It's very serious at the organization
when we're having elections.
They do campaign and we make sure
that people that are voting for these members,
they are involved in the community.
It can't be just that you recruit your family
to become a member and then they could vote for you.
No, you have to be active for the past three months,
so it takes a lot of data, looking at data,
looking at our database,
and making sure that we are doing the elections
every three years.
As a 501(c)(3), everybody wants people
that could bring money, funding to the organization,
on their board of directors,
but we also have to make sure that we have people
who are impacted directly that know
what's going on in their community.
They get a vote.
They vote like every other person on our board of directors.
They have a voice, and they're heard.
I feel like that's one of the ways
that you create leadership within an organization.
You make sure that people's voices are heard,
and that the people that you are serving are there
to make sure that you're providing the right services,
that you're fighting for the right campaigns
that your community want to fight for,
and that you're doing the right thing.
They're the ones that guide our work every day.
- May I comment?
- [Voiceover] Yes.
- You just said something really important.
There's some attitudinal barriers
that need to be disposed of.
For years, people have been thinking, "I can't.
"I won't because people say I can't, and I won't.
"I can't do."
It doesn't matter what structure I put in place
if they're just gonna sit in that structure
and not do or not think they can do.
We are talking about creating a system of leadership,
and I think it's a great point that you had that,
hey, you gotta participate.
You have to open your mouth.
You have to be no longer afraid to open your mouth,
that you really need to know what you need,
and ask for it.
There's some education involved,
so we can put structures,
and everybody said the board doesn't look.
The board doesn't look diverse.
Well, what if I had a whole diverse board,
but only two people made all the decisions,
'cause the others are window dressing.
So, looking one way and being another way
is something we really need to pay attention to.
- I just wanted to comment.
I think that these two organizations are a bit different.
We're now beginning to think about being intentional
around civic engagement.
How do we help or create opportunities
for people to be involved?
That was the next step
of this sustainable communities initiative
is teaching people civic engagement
in terms of the city council
or local government structures,
where you go when you have a problem,
how to talk to people about your problem,
the advocacy side.
The other thing --
this might be apalling to you all --
the year before last,
we decided to do a voter education initiative
for our non-profit partners.
We signed up with this national voters organization,
and they were gonna send someone down to meet.
As I was talking to my board,
I had board members that actually challenged
whether or not this organization
should be involved in politics.
Politics,
not education, not awareness, but politics.
It was another one of those "aha" experiences for me,
in terms of the conservative perspective that people have
around the role of organizations like the United Way.
Do you guys know about the United Way?
We have that Live United and it says,
"Give, volunteer, and advocate."
Right?
I've been asking, "So, what's the advocacy agenda,"
because I believe there's one.
I do have a committee that's working on it.
That's the great news,
but it's taken like three years to really begin
to move the organization where people feel comfortable
saying that, yes, advocacy is a major, major initiative
for the kind of work we should be doing,
in empowering people, engaging people
in the political process.
Voting is an important aspect of our work.
- Sometimes at the organization,
we have members who question the work that we're doing,
and that's when the directors, when we sit down,
and we're like, "That's what we're showing them.
"Now, we've gotta deal with it." (laughter)
Now, you have answers.
You have to answer their questions.
We've made it as a joke,
"That's what they're gonna do next time.
"They're gonna come and protest in front of our offices
"if you don't answer their questions,
"so we better get on the phone and call those leaders,
"and bring them in and talk to them,
"and explain whatever they want us to explain."
So, when you give people power,
you also have to respect the fact
that they're gonna question what you're teaching them.
- I think that's actually a great segue
into the next question,
which was really about how you hold yourselves accountable,
and the organization accountable
to having representational leadership.
What are the challenges and the opportunities you have
as leaders in that process?
(laughter)
- We have two sets of leadership school
in the organization.
We have Level One and that's for new members.
We teach them how to make change.
We do it through an eight-week leadership school,
and they meet every week for three hours.
Basically, the first week is just talking
about the problems in their communities,
and what can they do if they know anything
that they could do to change.
The following weeks, we guide them through politics,
through what's the city council,
what are they supposed to do,
how do you change what you don't like,
and how do you organize?
What's organizing?
Level Two is six months after Level One.
Basically, the leaders from Level One have
to recruit members,
have to show leadership by showing attendance
on the events, the protests, the campaigns
that we're working on.
Then, they move to how to talk to the media,
how do you go into your city council's office,
how you plan a campaign.
They kinda graduate at the end of the year by selecting --
we have a membership assembly every year
where we select the campaigns that we want
to work the following year,
and our members are the ones that decide
what campaigns we're gonna work on.
Our co-executive directors don't have that.
They don't decide what campaigns.
It's the members.
Basically, we have a housing group,
an environmental group, parents, workers in action,
and they do a presentation to about 700 members.
By voting, they get a vote -- just showing hands --
what campaigns, for example, paid sick days recently passed.
That was one of the campaigns
that we discussed three years ago
in our Jackson Heights office.
It was about, I would say, 175 people in the room,
just talking about we need to get paid sick days
for our low-income workers.
I don't need to lose my job because I'm sick,
and I can't make it to work.
When you hear people talking and you hear them say,
"That's what I want to do,"
and when you give them the power and you say,
"All right, let's do it.
"We have to work with this group of people.
"We have to find other organizations
"that wanna do the same,
"and that's how you create power."
But, it's not someone --
it's not one of the co-executive directors.
It's not the board telling the members,
"This is what you're gonna do,
"and you need to do it this way or that way."
It's our own members and they decide what's the goal.
What do we want to get from here?
Although they can't write the legislation --
we have to provide them with those tools --
but every step of the way, we keep them informed,
either by sending emails, newsletters, mailings,
and through our weekly meetings.
So, every step of the process, they're there.
The way that they hold us accountable
for the work that we do is by the goals
that we set up the year before.
We review them the year after,
and we check off the list
of the things that we did and we didn't do.
- I'm trying to figure out which level to go this on.
One of the core things that Centers for Independent Living
is the philosophy is wrapped around consumer direction
and consumer control.
That's something embedded in us.
That is the way we operate.
We don't prescribe what's good for you.
You tell us what service you need.
I think they call it person-centered,
but we actually let consumers decide in the same way.
We have these advisory committees that have been developed,
and those advisory committees are consumer-run.
The only thing we have is we have a staff
that's assigned to assist,
and we provide a little bit of training for them
organizationally-wise,
and how to have meetings and things of that nature.
But, they meet themselves.
They give their own fund raisers.
They do everything.
That's empowering to them.
From an organizational standpoint, anyone that aspires
to supervisory- or management-level skills,
whether they're there or not,
we do have management training.
We have training that's a 12-week course.
Anybody can take it.
They don't have to be in the position,
just to let them know some of the responsibilities
and things that go with it.
From a national perspective --
and I'm trying not to hog everybody's time --
we have board orientation.
Board orientation, if you're on the board,
you have to get that.
If you become a chair of the advisory committee --
and we're rather large.
There's about 20 different legislative
and advocacy committees --
you need to take this training on how to be a chair,
how to set the agenda,
how to make sure that your meeting is moving
and going toward a goal, and there has to be goals.
What we've done now, I shared with the group.
Our center is divided into many departments.
There's ones that's really mission-driven,
and there's others that deal with home-
and community-based waivers,
while we just make sure everyone experiences
a nursing home transition.
That's from the shopping to the move,
to moving of the consumer, to give them that.
We also now make sure everybody goes on a legislative visit,
and we do give training before that so folks would know.
We have some things in place.
Some things are working well,
others aren't because it's a work in progress anyway.
We're not just gonna get it here,
but we are working toward it.
- Yes, this is a real tough one
for the kind of organization that I represent,
because we're somewhat removed from the direct service,
although there's been more conversation on a national level
around this issue of accountability
around leadership and representation of the organizations
that we fund.
And so, in some United Ways,
they're just beginning to require their funding agencies
to do diversity and inclusion assessments,
from the top to the bottom, looking at their boards,
the board representation, the staffing,
to make sure that the staffing reflects the populations.
However the dialogue, the discussion has been
we're not in a position to mandate.
However, just having funded partners understand
that there is an issue of accountability
that we're beginning to explore
around making sure there's diversity.
On the other hand, if the United Way does not have
that level of leadership in diversity
from the top to the bottom,
then they're hard-pressed to have that expectation
for their partners.
There's this movement for United Ways to really begin
to be held accountable through our reporting,
to report our representation, our diversity.
Again, they can't mandate because communities
are so different across the country.
In some communities, there's no diversity at all.
In other communities, there is,
so it's very complex.
Within my own organization,
if there are individuals who demonstrate
an interest in leadership,
then absolutely, I make a significant investment
in making sure they participate in leadership programs,
development programs.
And, on a regional level, I've been involved with a group
that's called Leadership Pioneer Valley,
where we have been recruiting and offering a full year
of leadership development for middle-level leaders
across all sectors,
and again throughout the region,
so you have these middle leaders,
middle-level leaders from Northampton,
from Greenfield,
from inner city like Springfield and Holyoke,
spending a full year together
working on regional leadership.
There's sort of this new level of accountability,
not just for one community
but looking at the reality that many of the problems
that we face require much more of a regional approach.
In order to do that, we gotta develop regional leadership
across all sectors where people can work collaboratively.
At this point, it's like holding myself accountable
to be involved in providing whatever support
and leadership I can to make sure
these opportunities are available.
- Speaking about accountability,
when I really think about it,
when I really think about some
of the efforts we put through,
it's not enough,
because as we said earlier today,
there's issues of equity versus inequity,
and they're deep, they run deep.
You know, I can talk about someone being a leader
of an organization,
but what are the barriers that stop them
from being a leader?
Is it their environment?
Is it that they're poor and they haven't had opportunities,
that the schools weren't any good where they grew up
and they didn't have a chance?
When I look at even doing things
from our organizational nature,
I see inequity as a piece that destroys all of this.
We can band-aid.
We can set up structures but until we cure equity,
making sure everything's equity,
and you guys are students,
you know about the social determinants.
You know that poverty, housing, employment,
income, whatever we wanna throw out there,
environment, are all pieces of inequity.
We need to solve inequity while we're doing
these things we're trying to do,
because if we build an equitable society,
some of these things go away.
They go away and so, I talked.
I said inequity, it comes from,
I'm gonna say racism,
but I want you to listen what I say racism is.
Racism is a system
that creates an advantage for one group
versus a disadvantage for another.
A lot of people in this room may have been part of racism.
People with disabilities, under my definition,
you're disadvantaged for a reason.
Maybe you look different.
There's stigmas that come with that.
Some of it's institutionalized,
and some things internalize
because when we hear it so much --
and I'm talking about attitudinal --
we don't think we can be anything else
than what people have told us.
We're talking about struggles.
We're talking about some things
that work on the surface,
but I'm just saying one thing you wanna do,
keep equity foremost in your mind.
- Just to add to what you were saying,
one of the things that we try to get people
to understand in our community
is that you come through our doors needing a lawyer.
I would say 100% of the people that come
through our door for the first time,
they need a housing lawyer.
They need a lawyer for their welfare case.
They need help with their health insurance.
Their kids are having problems in the school.
The school system is not working for them.
The first thing we tell them, we're not a Legal Aid,
but we're part of a bigger movement.
Once you solve your problem,
if you need help tomorrow, we cannot provide it to you.
We don't have the capacity.
We don't have the staff to solve every single problem
that comes through our doors,
but if you wanna make a change in the long-term,
then come back.
Here's a membership manual.
Read what we do and if you're interested,
come back and be part of this.
That's all it takes.
There's people there that I've known members
since I was a receptionist 10 years ago,
and they still come every week to our meeetings.
They ask me, "Hey, how's your kids?
"I remember when you were pregnant in the front."
That's family, that's community.
That's how you build power.
- [Stan] Mm hmm, excellent.
- Our next question is a little bit of a shift in gears.
During my time at Smith,
I feel like I've learned a lot while being here.
I think a big chunk of that learning has been
learning the language of social work
and the language of clinical social work.
So, I'm also curious as to how an element
of code switching plays into your roles as leaders
in your agencies and organizations.
I imagine there's a lot of stakeholders and constituents
that you have to be able to navigate through
on a regular basis.
- [Dora] Let me say (words drowned out by throat clearing).
I speak business.
I speak community.
I speak professional staff.
I speak donor.
I have so many languages
I sometimes am so confused. (laughter)
And then I speak family.
I speak church.
How many languages?
And we had fun with this at dinner
because the first question is like,
"Do I really understand the question?"
As we talked about it,
it is that we're developing every day,
as many of you, different ways of communicating
with different people, constituents,
whether it's our clients, or whether it's our families,
or whether it's our funders.
And we're trained to do that.
It would be really very unrealistic,
or very inappropriate for me to go home
and talk to my family when I talk about money,
as if I'm talking to them as a potential donor. (laughter)
I sort of have to decode constantly.
I think it's almost --
it isn't even intentional any longer.
I can move from one meeting to another, depending,
and automatically --
is it decode?
- [Cindy] Code switching.
- Code switch.
- [Cindy] Decode works, too.
- I think that's a skill that we all develop
in order to be effective in our respective communities.
There was a time growing up,
and I remember when I went off to college,
and I came back to my little community,
and those of my friends that did not go to college,
or family members,
and they would say, "You sound different."
- [Stan] I heard that.
- "You sound so different,"
and I would really work so hard
to not sound different,
to be like, "Oh, no, no, no."
At one point, it was so obvious that I did sound different,
and that I no longer had to apologize for that,
because for a while, I apologized,
and saw that as something really bad and negative.
Then, I realized that it was something
that I had to develop.
I had to learn how to speak in different settings
of different populations.
But, when I'm at home and I'm with my friends,
I know how to say "cray cray" and you know --
(laughter) cray cray. (laughter)
I know a little bit about that.
Some of you don't know, I know,
but I do have a few words in that language
that I speak well, and that's cray cray.
Nothing else I remember,
but my grandchildren are teaching me a new language
from time to time.
So, it is learning how to communicate
in a very different world,
and we can over-communicate,
and we talked about that in one or our classes,
because sometimes we can over-relate,
and we come across as being unauthentic.
So, we have to be careful but just to be aware
that we speak different languages
with different populations.
- I don't know how to follow up after that.
I will say this.
My definition of cultural and linguistic competency is
being able to serve anyone that comes through the door.
It's that simple.
Therefore, for us to do that, we need to communicate.
I work in an organization, a disability organization,
so there are different --
I may have to use sign language.
I may have to have an interpreter while I'm speaking.
I just had a great experience in Washington, D.C.,
when we had some international visitors here
that's doing independent living.
To my surprise, I was assigned Kazakhstan
to mentor all week.
I didn't know how well it was gonna go,
but working through the interpreter,
we had three- and four-hour conversations about IL.
You know what? Guess what.
Their needs and wants are just like ours.
And just like you said, Dora,
you don't think about how many different modes
of communication you have,
but when she was running them down,
I said, "Yeah, that's right. I've done that."
You talk one way to consumers.
You talk to a different set of consumers this way.
You talk to your donors this way.
You talk to your board this way.
You talk to your family that way, but whatever you do,
you have to be concise in communication.
With people in wheelchairs, I will kneel down
so I can be the same height,
instead of looking down at them, 'cause I'm on your level.
I will speak that way.
That's something that we have to learn in being inclusive.
The other thing is look at who you're serving.
If you look at your demographic of your service area
versus your demographic of who you're serving,
then you'll see you have some work to do.
We have work to do.
We develop goals to say,
"Okay, we're gonna move this up 5% this year.
"Let's monitor and find out."
But, you just hit it on the head.
- We were having this conversation over dinner,
and one of the stories that I mentioned is that we serve --
98% of our membership is Latinos,
and you would think that we all speak Spanish
and we're all the same.
Well, you're wrong. (laughter)
In Bushwick, the majority of our members are
from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Mexico.
They come in, they tell you what they want, and they go.
In Queens, a lot of our members are from Colombia,
El Salvador, Ecuador.
They come in, they ask tons of questions,
tons of questions,
but they're very shy in the beginning,
so you kinda have to pull it out of them.
They ask, "Do you have English classes?"
Yes, we do.
"When are they?"
"And do you also offer legal services?"
"And I have a friend of a friend who needed this,"
and they don't leave.
Then, we started noticing
that if you work the front desk in Brooklyn,
you won't know how to work the front desk in Queens,
because you have to learn how to manage those questions.
You don't have 10 minutes for each person
that walks through the door,
so you have to learn how to communicate.
With our members, I remember when we go lobbying,
they used to say, "What do you do? What's lobbying?
"Do you just go in the lobby and start talking to people?"
(laughter)
- Once they learn and they learn how to talk
to the people that are going to make the change,
then that's when you know your job is complete.
As an organizer --
I'm not an organizer, but when I talk to the organizers,
and they tell me, "This member just started
"in the organization six months ago,
"and he had a conversation for 10 minutes
"with Congressman Luis Gutierrez,
"and they explained exactly what's going on
"in their communities and he could relate to that."
That's when you know you're communicating effectively,
when that person could put themselves in their shoes
and know exactly where you're coming from.
You have to learn how to talk different to a funder,
to a member, to your co-executive director, to your board.
- The opportunity that code switching brings is the
ability to communicate differently
in different circumstances.
The next question is about what kinds of things
you actually can bring to the roles that you're in,
and what you have to leave behind.
In an organizational context that I've been in in the past,
one of the things that we would talk about is
that you can't necessarily bring all of who you are
to your job,
and that gets harder and harder the further you rise
in an organization.
What are some of the things you can bring,
given the roles that you have,
and what are some of the things you have
to leave at the door?
- I had to bring me,
and it's hard for me not to bring me.
That's a very difficult question for me
because I laugh loud,
and I try to kinda talk softer from time to time.
It's hard for me to not bring my humor,
and my passion and my love for people,
so I bring me.
I try to be authentic,
and certainly appropriate given certain situations,
depending on the meeting,
or the session or the board.
But, I always bring the authentic Dora
because I've figured out, and I figured out a long time ago,
that if I couldn't bring the authentic Dora to the door,
then I couldn't continue to be true to this work
and to the people that I serve.
So, I bring my passion and my love,
and my commitment to be an agent of change.
I think people are now --
I guess I've been around so long,
people just expect that, too,
that I'm going to be the Dora today --
if you see the Dora today,
I'm gonna be the same Dora tomorrow.
That's how I live my life.
It's too late to change. (laughter)
- I think there are some boundaries
being a president and CEO,
but like Dora, I'd rather be authentic.
I know something that I need to be careful with is my faith,
because --
not that I would offend,
but some people always look for an opening
to try to get you.
It's just, "Oh, he made us pray," which I don't do,
but I've had that happen in an organization,
because someone got fired by somebody else.
We had a big dinner and somebody asked me to bless the food.
Of course, it wasn't real, but at the same time,
it makes you think.
Where I like to counsel people,
when they're having trouble,
I had to be very careful.
However, the fun guy, the laughing guy,
the very serious, analytical, quantitative guy,
it's all mixed up in there,
so sometimes, you don't know what you're gonna get.
(laughter)
- But, you'll know it's me. (laughter)
And I think that's what helped
made me have to be honest.
It helps transcend --
you transcend groups maybe you could not be in there
because of your personality.
What you wanna be able to do is navigate through everybody,
and get their attention,
and be able to converse, and talk, and negotiate.
Sometimes, you gotta be you.
You can't be somebody else
because you're not gonna get through.
You're not gonna get it done.
It took me a while to learn that,
but now that I learned it, hey,
everything's open.
- When I started working at the front desk,
I (mumbles), I was very shy.
I didn't wanna speak English (laughter)
because I have an accent.
I felt bad,
and one of the co-executive directors told me,
"Alenis, if you don't communicate,
"you don't get anywhere,
"and if people see that we are teaching people yourself,
"and if they don't see you practicing English,
"what are you telling the members?
"Why do they just wanna learn how to write it,
"and read it, if they can't speak?"
One of the things that I'm always going to take with me
is to be me,
so even if I have an accent,
I'm gonna try my best for someone
to understand what I'm saying.
Even if my chair and my (laughter) --
if my "ch" is not perfect, it's okay.
You guys know what I want to say.
I learned that.
I learned how to be me,
and not to be afraid to speak my mind.
I take that with me,
and the best thing is just to not forget
where I come from.
A lot of people think that I'm still the receptionist
when they see me sitting at the front desk
covering for someone.
And I let them.
I don't tell them I'm the director of operations, no.
I tell them, I welcome them into the organization,
just like I did 10 years ago.
A lot of them have known that I've grown
and I have a different position.
They call me la jefe, which is the boss,
and it makes me mad.
I'm like, "Don't call me that." (laughter)
"I'm just Alenis." (laughter)
When people see that, they treat you with respect,
and when you give them what you want to receive,
it's just karma, and it works that way.
That's something that I'm very aware of.
It's just be yourself.
Never try to be someone you're not,
or try to be someone that you can't be.
Just this is what you get,
here, there, everywhere, it's this.
- You said something important again.
I'm just telling you that you never arrive.
I don't care where you're at.
If you're truly stewarding,
and that's what I call it,
stewarding staff and skills,
hey, you're gonna go down like you are doing,
and do what they do.
You're gonna show 'em.
You're gonna make sure they have opportunity to grow,
for their skills to grow.
You're not worried about the so-called power you have,
because it's your job to broker that power
and make sure someone else is in power
when it's time for you to move on.
If you have to sweep the floor,
if you have to mop the floor,
this is stuff I think we all have done,
in front of staff.
Why are you doing it?
Because it needs to be done.
- [Dora] Right, exactly.
- I think it's a good lesson to take with you.
I think that does help with inclusion,
and even people trusting you to move forward.
- That's a good point because from time to time,
I'll answer the phone if I'm out at the front desk
and it's ringing.
And it says, "Who's this? Is this Dora?"
"Yes."
"Why are you answering the phone?"
"Because it was ringing." (laughter)
"And I was standing here."
Yeah, again, you're right.
I'm very intentional.
I work on weekends.
I cover tables at carnivals and fairs.
I try not to ask my staff to do anything that I wouldn't do,
to make any sacrifice that I wouldn't make,
because I think that people watch you.
Mentoring is both formal and informal,
because people are always watching you
when you're in a leadership role.
I was at a training when someone said
it's sometimes as a result of watching you
people decide that they don't want to be leaders,
because what they see,
they don't really respect or appreciate.
So, you really have to be careful
because we can turn people off
of aspiring or considering leadership
based on what they've observed.
- I want to thank all of the panelists
for your very thoughtful comments.
I wanted to turn it over now to the audience.
If you guys have any questions for the panelists,
now would be the time to ask.
- [Voiceover] (speaks without microphone)
- Do you have a question?
Please speak up, too, as you're asking your question.
- [Voiceover] (speaks without microphone)
- [Voiceover] And I have one question for Alenis,
which is about I'd love to hear more about the meetings
that the members are required to participate in
after they go through the leadership training,
what those meetings look like.
Then, I'm also curious about how you
at Make the Road
and then, also, at the Center for Independent Living,
integrate interpreters
and people needing assistance
in communicating with each other at meetings.
- We have different organizing groups,
and they each deal with different issues.
We have Parent in Action,
and they deal with kids in the school and the school system;
Workers in Action; Immigration Services.
Those are committees that we have.
Every night, we have meetings in our organization,
especially in Brooklyn and in Queens.
It's like home.
You come through our doors,
and the smell of rice, chicken and beans,
it's everywhere.
My staff hates it,
'cause they have to pay a lotta money for laundry
'cause it gets on their clothes.
They have to wash their hair every day
because of the smell of food,
but we have meetings every night in each of our offices.
We have anywhere from 50 to 70 to 80 people,
and they come together.
The way that we do those meetings is
that one week it's workshop.
They pick any topic within their committee
that they're interested in,
and the leaders and the organizers,
they develop that workshop.
Then, we have Leadership Week
that's only the leaders from that group,
so out of the 80 people, only 20 people come together,
and they decide what the agenda
for the next month is gonna be.
Then again, we have the regular committee meeting.
So, every day, you would see anywhere from 80 --
and if you include the youth --
you'll see more than a hundred people in our offices
every single day.
We provide child care with our meetings,
'cause we realize that a lot of the people
that participate have kids,
and it's hard on weekdays during school days.
If we don't provide child care,
they won't come to the meetings.
There's people that say, "I won't come
"because I have to cook for my family."
Well, we're gonna provide the food,
so bring your family.
You get to participate. You get to learn.
You get child care and you eat.
So, you go home at 9:00 p.m.,
take a shower and go to sleep. (laughter)
(laughter drowns out speaker's words) the next day.
I forgot the other part of your question.
- [Voiceover] If you have members at the same meeting,
some of whom speak English
and some of whom don't speak English,
how do you --
- We have translation equipment,
and that is the savior of our organization.
We have right now about 50 pieces of that equipment.
Our meetings are mostly in Spanish,
but if we get non-Spanish speakers,
we provide translation for them.
We make sure that they get it,
so we divide it out.
The translation equipment is expensive.
It's about $4,000 for 48 pieces of equipment.
What we did, we divided it.
We have 20 pieces in the Brooklyn office,
20 pieces in the Queens office.
If they need it in Staten Island or Long Island,
they have to let us know in advance so we take it there.
If we're gonna have more than 50 people,
we make sure that we either rent equipment --
we have become familiar with a company that we work with
and they give us services very cheap
because they know the type of work that we do --
but we make sure that we provide translation
for our members and non-members.
- You asked about interpreters or sign language.
We do have a deaf and hard-of-hearing department.
They do sign.
We have an Assistive Technology Department
that provides all kinds of communicative devices,
including phones for people that cannot hear.
We also, when we have large meetings, very large ones,
we Paper Cart,
and Cart will transcribe the meetings
right there on large screens where people,
if they don't want to follow the sign language,
they can follow the Cart.
We also, because we started at any meeting
in the city of Pittsburgh or Allegheny County,
if people with disabilities are there,
everyone now ensures that we have Cart
and interpreters there so we don't leave anyone out.
- [Voiceover] (speaker not on microphone)
have been very much if there's an insular,
very top-heavy, very unaccountable model
that's permeating legal services, housing,
homelesssness, certainly the community action agencies,
Northamshire Community Action, for example.
1.5 million went missing,
and there's never been any resolution of that story.
How do you deal with that entrenched self-interest
that, the dish ran away with the spoon, basically?
That's all I can say.
I'm sorry about that.
- From a funder's perspective,
that's a major challenge for, I think, any funder.
When we're looking at funding organizations,
we have a very, very rigid due diligence that we apply
in terms of looking at financial statements,
board composition, making sure that things are updated
and so forth.
Unfortunately, there's this history
around community-based organizations
similar to what you just described,
where management has not always been the best.
It's very complex.
Some people would say because management
in these community-based organizations,
especially like CAP agencies,
where the boards are primarily made up
of members of the community, the neighborhoods,
because by law, federal law, they're required
to recruit people from the communities
where they're located.
Often those individuals that sit on those boards
really don't understand the accountability factor.
So, their director, their executive directors
get away with murder.
I heard, I think, yeah, I think Stan said that,
within their organization,
they're teaching people about governance and oversight.
Again, if we want to have people
from communities and neighborhoods serving on boards,
we have to really teach them how to pay attention
to what's going on
so that communities don't get ripped off.
It's an unfortunate situation but, in these CAP agencies,
that has been a historical problem.
I don't know the answer to it,
except people have to be vigilant.
- I think I heard the other part of that question
being talking about top-heavy
in several of these areas.
As long as the haves and the have-nots keep growing
in this direction,
it'll never change.
You'll see housing development over here,
and disenfranchisement over here.
With disenfranchisement comes a lot
of other social determinants
that there will never be equity.
It's a problem of justice.
It's a problem where voices need to be heard.
People need to stand up for what is right,
because as a haves and a haves-not goes like this,
some of us haves may become have-nots pretty soon.
So, we need to pay attention.
That's the best way I can answer your question.
I just know it's there. It's rampant.
You look all around you.
- Just to build on that question,
you had commented earlier about the inequities,
and that your organization wasn't doing enough.
- No, we're not.
- If you could do anything,
what is something that you would do,
all of you in your own way,
to counteract the effects of the inequities
that you're describing?
- I would certainly promote human rights agenda
as one major solution to dealing with issues
of injustice and equity across the board.
I have this fantasy what would happen
if we didn't have to talk about women's issues,
or gay issues, or African-American issues,
but that we just talked about opportunity for all of us,
access for all of us, fairness for all of us.
I think the human rights agenda really does promote that.
Unfortunately, and I haven't done a great deal of research,
but the U.S. has not been a major proponent
of the human rights agenda.
In fact, other countries (laughter),
third-world countries are doing much better than we are.
At some point, if we could launch a movement
that would speak to the human rights of all of us,
the world would be very, very different.
- Just to add on, all these different groups,
your disabled, the aged and everything,
we have similar agendas.
Just taking your human rights agenda,
instead of fighting for a little piece,
why don't we fight for the whole thing,
and get equitable across the board?
I think we all fight for little pieces,
and no one gets anything,
and the haves get more.
So, that takes everybody working,
and it's a movement.
It doesn't happen overnight,
like housing development doesn't happen overnight.
If you're not in that process for 10 or 15 years
when it's finally built,
as soon as you step out, something changes.
- About two years ago, we had a discussion.
Because we have different committees.
they tend to each one get more passionate
about their own fight.
When we had all of them,
most of our members in one room,
and we wanted to decide what's the next campaign,
what do we wanna work on,
we realized that what people want is respect and dignity.
So, we launched our Respect and Dignity campaign,
and it fit every hat in every committee.
For Parents in Action, we want respect and dignity
for our kids in the school and for their parents.
For workers, we want you to respect me
and pay me what you owe me.
For those workers that go and they say,
"I worked 50 hours and they give me $280,
"I want you to give me the dignity that I deserve
"for the work that I did."
For immigrants, I want you to know that I'm here.
I'm here.
I'm not an alien.
I'm not illegal.
I'm undocumented, so respect me.
Give me what I deserve.
That has been one of the most beautiful things
that I experienced,
and we've put it on our shirts now, in the back.
They say, "Respect and Dignity,"
and whenever we have a protest, the news will say,
"They're just asking for respect and dignity.
"They don't want anything else."
It involves everything.
It involves every fight that you wanna fight.
You have to do it with respect and dignity.
- [Voiceover] Are there other questions?
- [Voiceover] My question relates to voting.
In your various responsibilities,
do you consider it a part
of your professional responsibilities to encourage people
to vote, or to become voters, to facilitate the voting?
What prompted me to ask this question
is when you were referring to social justice and equity.
Often, politicians only react
to what the voters --
or how the voters vote,
and if they vote.
I'd like your response to that question, please.
- From the perspective of disability organizations,
we found out that
if everyone that was eligible to vote that was disabled,
they would've changed every presidential election,
except five.
What we understand is, we need to develop a voting bloc.
Part of the things we need to do is ensure
that voting machines are accessible,
and people can get to them.
That's a fight we're having right now,
but that's only a piece.
The other piece is, from an attitude standpoint,
we have to let folks with disabilities know
that their votes count
We can only change things if they do their part.
That's one thing we're trying to do.
Most non-profits are, as far as I know, in Pennsylvania.
We need to offer voter registration
to everybody that we serve.
We have to do that, and sign them up.
But, that's only part of it.
We gotta get people to the polls,
and the polls need to be accessible.
We are working hard from a local and a national perspective,
to do that 'cause we realize a voting bloc could be huge,
and it could move some things the way we'd like them to go.
- At Make the Road, we have free citizenship clinics
where we help people for free
fill out a citizenship application,
Then, we provide them with classes
in order to help them pass that test.
Last year, we registered about 12,000 people to vote
in our communities, and we are working together
with the Long Island Civic Engagement Table
to register people in Long Island to vote and make a change.
Between Bushwick, Staten Island and Jackson Heights,
we did over 12,000 last year alone.
This year, we are starting our --
we call it the Voting Power campaign.
Our own members volunteer
to go out and get people to vote.
I'm sorry, as a 501(c)(3),
we're not allowed to endorse any political activity,
so it's hard to get the politicians to like us,
and to give us power.
They do it because of the amount of members
that we mobilize.
Having 13,000 members speaks by itself.
- Yes, it does.
- And a lot of them could vote.
Most of them have the right to vote.
- I noted earlier that, year before last,
I had a couple of board members
that really did not understand why the United Way
would be involved in voter registration
and voter education activities but in spite of that,
the Public Policy and Advocacy Committee
won the confidence of the majority
to host a voter registration education forum
for our community partners.
It was our first venture out into that arena.
And then last month, at our Public Policy meeting,
there's a recommendation that will go
to the board in September,
that voter education, voter registration become
a core sort of activity for this United Way.
We'll see what happens in September,
but I think we have enough support at this point
where people are feeling part of it's educating
our board members that we're not talking about lobbying,
and that it is non-partisan,
and that it is another way of empowering,
building stronger communities, as you said.
Having people involved in civic engagement
and having them understand how to use their voice
can really make a big difference
in very poor disenfranchised communities.
That's what we're trying to do
is change that attitude and perspective,
and the hopelessness and the apathy
that some people experience.
I'll keep you all posted, or you can go on our website,
see if I'm still the director. (laughter)
I don't think they'll get rid of me right away.
- We just have a few minutes left,
and I know that there's one question there in the back.
Let's make that our last question.
- [Voiceover] I was wondering, Miss Morel,
if you'd be willing
to talk about the history of how you became organization,
that it seems like leadership is a strong component
of who you all are.
I don't know if you've always been
that way in the organization,
or that's the initial vision, or is it transformed.
I'd be curious to hear that history.
- Two of the co-founders of Make the Road by Walking,
which was the original name,
Andrew Friedman and Oona Chatterjee,
they were NYU law students.
They were doing surveys around the community
of what people needed.
When they went to a church,
Father Powers told them,
"Listen, we need lawyers,
"but we also need to teach people
"that they could do this on their own.
"They don't need a lawyer to go for a hearing at Welfare.
"They could do it by going by themselves."
So, Oona and Andrew, instead of becoming regular lawyers,
they said, "Hey, why don't we do organizing?
"Why don't we start doing workshops?
"Why don't we teach people that they have the power
"to do things that could change not only their problems,
"but a lot of the problems that we have in communities?"
These two hipsters, like we call them, (laughter)
they had a vision and they started talking
to the people that they were helping.
One of the organizers that has been there for 15 years,
her name is Yorelis,
she started as a client for Andrew.
He helped her with her Welfare case,
and now she is our immigrant civic rights organizer.
It's just powerful to see that you have people
that come from their community
working for their community.
A lot of people that work at Make the Road New York
are people that grew up in the organization.
We have about four youth leaders
that are now adult organizers,
and they were in the organization since they were 14.
They didn't have anywhere to go.
They didn't have any after-school program,
and they would come to the organization,
and they formed their own youth program.
Little by little, looking for some funding,
and trying to get money,
and trying to get people to fund the work
that they wanted to do,
they created a Youth Power project
that is helping schools in the community,
that's helping kids to stay out of the streets.
They also have a Student Success Center
in two high schools near our offices.
Every year, they send about 180 to 200 students to college.
They help them from their college application
to studying for their SATs,
to making sure that they fill out
the right financial aid form.
That's how we do it.
(applause)
- [Dina] Before we lose people,
I just wanted to make sure that everyone knew
that there's a follow-up panel discussion
that Cindy and I will be facilitating
on Friday from 3:45 to 5:30, in (mumbles) 101,
that will allow us to kind of take this conversation
further and think about how we might apply it
to Smith as an Institution to our field placements,
and to our agency life as we move out into the real world.
- This is a pretty real world, too, in its own way.
Thank you all for coming,
and thank you so much to the panel
for this range of perspectives,
to be very clear that accountability is grounded
in stuff like intention,
and being really thoughtful about how you get
from intention to actually doing it.
I love the idea of authenticity,
that you really can't be anyone but yourself, anyway,
so you might as well be yourself.
That's gonna really be a powerful part
of the work that you do.
And also, kinda recognize across these
very different kinds of organizations,
a membership organization,
a consumer-driven, consumer-rights organization,
a planning organization,
in each instance, there really is a common thread
around building in structures
that really hold each other accountable,
whether it's members demanding it,
or consumers demanding it,
or funders and communities being listened to.
That all is part of the work, and that's our work.
Our role is to listen to folks,
and to kinda deal with them from where they're coming from.
I just really appreciate what's been said.
Once again, thank you all,
and you got some work to do
when you go out into the world,
and to the agencies you're gonna be doing work in,
to kinda bring the intention and the accountability
that you have to be carrying
when you're out there doing services for folks.
On that note of responsibility and, hopefully,
intention of yours,
thank you very much for coming and good night.
(applause)