Boot Camp 2050 for Change
Angelenos are hungry for community, face-to-face. For nearly 40 years Liberty Hill has been bringing communities together across race, class, gender, sexuality and geography, but we’ve been doing this on a relatively small scale. Now, we see a huge opportunity to advance community-building to a new scale by the Impact Professionals who will build the L.A. of 2050. When Liberty Hill has brought these Impact Professionals together whether they are nonprofit staff, tech-savvy social entrepreneurs, community organizers, elected officials, or Angelenos who simply want to “do good,” they have asked us for more, more! Liberty Hill’s L.A. Boot Camp 2050 for Change is our answer. We propose to host a series of pop-up events in the next seven months in partnership with dozens of our grantees whose roots in L.A.’s low income and minority communities run deep in order to recruit and galvanize a new generation of idealists. These pop-up events will be inspired and fun gathering places for people to begin to learn “the science” of social change. Most people - no matter how much good they want to do - don’t know the lessons of community organizing or how to strategically advance change in their communities, let alone across Los Angeles. For the last several years Liberty Hill has had a training program specifically designed to help individuals strengthen their skills in making change. We will recruit this Next Generation of Idealists into a Boot Camp 2050 for Change –a hands-on, practical training. It’s part “TEDx for Social Justice,” part roll-up-your-sleeves, nuts and bolts, “here’s how you make change” training.
What are some of your organization’s most important achievements to date?
Liberty Hill invests in community groups on the frontlines of change with critical resources that are needed to advance their work and win. We supplement those financial resources with a highly impactful training program designed to advance grassroots campaigns for social change.
Over the last 10 years, this is what Liberty Hill has helped our grantees deliver for Los Angeles:
• Nearly 100,000 low-income men and women registered to vote
• Legal safeguards to protect California's 25,000 LGBTQ high school students from harassment and violence
• 25,000 men and women raised above the poverty level by living wage jobs
• $400 million secured for parks in low-income neighborhoods
• 400,000 L.A. bus riders ride the largest clean-fuel bus fleet in the country
• $1.74 million in back wages for men and women working at poverty wages in Koreatown supermarkets
• 300,000 bottle-fed babies safe from the toxic chemical BPA
• 30,000 L.A. transgender persons with improved access to medical care
Please identify any partners or collaborators who will work with you on this project.
We will partner with Liberty Hill grantees and their allies in order to plan and host events that represent the diversity of the Liberty Hill community and inspire Impact Professionals and other Next Generation idealists to meet each other and begin to collaborate on campaigns for change.
Please explain how you will evaluate your project. How will you measure success?
Initial outcomes will be measured by tracking the number of people who participate at the events, the number of people who participate in the Boot Camp 2050 for Change, and the scale of the social media reach generated by this unprecedented partnership of community organizations and Impact Professionals.
How will your project benefit Los Angeles?
L.A. needs a social force to bring the next generation of idealists into conversation and action. This proposal will bring together Impact Professionals and grassroots leaders representing a cross section of race, class, gender, sexuality and geography to overcome socially constructed boundaries which we recognize are imaginary and changeable.
By bringing together, L.A.’s next generation of idealists, Liberty Hill will catalyze a new and impactful force for change in many neighborhoods and on multiple issues. Since these efforts and campaigns will be driven by this generation, we can channel our region’s available potential –its people who are yearning to connect– to reshape L.A. into a vigorous, thriving and pleasing place to live by 2050.
Our 40-year track record tells us that by building on longtime relationships of trust and supporting those relationships with high-impact training, the benefits to L.A.’s political and social life are potentially enormous.
What would success look like in the year 2050 regarding your indicator?
Success in 2050 will be measurable in several incremental improvements in the quality of life in Los Angeles. By laying the groundwork in Social Connectedness now, some examples of success might be evidenced by:
• Advancing EDUCATION reform that will reward success and not punish youth
• Expansion of green spaces and clean air quality, two fundamental ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY improvements which will reduce environmentally-related cases of asthma and cancer
• Improving access to HEALTH care services and well-being opportunities
• Amplifying the voices of marginal communities in the ARTS and strengthening CULTURAL VITALITY by making LA the venue of choice for creative thinkers and innovators
• Lifting the most vulnerable low-wage workers our of poverty through increased INCOME & EMPLOYMENT opportunities
• Safeguarding affordable HOUSING stock
• Increasing PUBLIC SAFETY through community centered policing and common sense neighborhood restoration