It feels like giving birth. After a long time planning and prepping for conception, twenty community members gathered on Jan 26 for the first session of the LINC Academy for Social Transformation (L.A.S.T.).
About four years ago, LINC staff dreamed of a "leadership academy" that would engage and empower residents. That dream could not have happened four, or even three, years ago. The resources were not there, the staff was not there, the time was not there. But the dream was kept alive. Almost two years ago, Believe 2 Become came our way. We crossed paths with National Community Development Institute and experienced the CBLI (Community-Based Leadership Institute). It reassured us that training as a way to build capacity needs to go hand-in-hand with any engagement effort and, once again, our dream of an academy was revived.
Whether in our efforts to create jobs and businesses in the community, in our homeownership classes or counseling sessions, LINC's team all came to the same realization - empowering residents to take ownership of their communities is central to the sustainability of this work.
L.A.S.T. is about experiencing a social transformation. It is about creating a culture of learning and camaraderie as we join forces to make our communities better. L.A.S.T. is about ideas, lessons learned throughout life and professional experiences. It is about shedding light on and understanding community issues and the leadership abilities necessary to tackle those issues, creating a better future for all. L.A.S.T. is about change, about hope, about community.
A group of twenty community members have completed day one and two of the four day training. At the end of the first day, a participant shared this reflection, “I always wanted to become a leader in my community and I believe today I became the leader that I always wanted to become.”
A second group of emerging leaders will begin training in March and new cohorts of the LINC Academy for Social Transformation will be rolled out continually through 2012.
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