As we approach the end of another year and the end of the
decade, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on the work of the Community
Learning Partnership (CLP).
Since its founding more than a decade ago, CLP has grown a network of 15 new
college and community partnerships that bring together academic institutions
and leaders from local low-income communities and communities of color. Working
as genuine partners, they have collaborated in creating unique credentials in
community organizing, development, and leadership. Close to 1,000 students have
completed CLP credentials over the decade. As we enter 2020, the CLP Network
includes 10 active programs at eight colleges in six states. Together, these
programs offer five community change certificates, three community change
degrees, and two community change minors. Each semester, over 300 students
enroll in core CLP classes across the network, with about 100 completing CLP
certificates, degrees, or minor programs each year.
But these numbers don’t mean very much without a picture of the actual people
they represent: individual students and alumni around the country doing
critical work to transform their communities. This includes alumni like Angelica Esquivel who now coordinates De Anza
College’s certificate in Leadership and Social Change (LSC) — the very
program she herself completed — and who also serves on the CLP Board; and Lisa Owen, who applied her learning
in the CLP-affiliated Community
Development Program at Minneapolis College to cofound the only
woman and minority-owned signage company in the state.
This also includes current students like Dawn Wilson-Clark, who plans to use her
training through the Community Leadership Program at Henry Ford College to
improve education policy in her hometown of Detroit. And Nyeelah Rousseau, who is enrolled
in the Youth
Empowerment and Urban Studies (YES) program at West Chester University, and
plans to pursue a career in community development after graduation.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned since our founding, it’s this: our country
needs people with not only the knowledge, skills, and experience to organize
change, but also the deep cultural understanding of their community’s needs and
aspirations to lead the vision for change. Angelica, Lisa, Dawn, and Nyeelah
are just a few of the many faces of CLP students and alumni contributing to
progressive social change.
Lastly, as the current decade drew to a close, CLP reflected on the strategies that will be needed to vastly scale up the work of our network. With the wide-spread gap in opportunities for CLP student to “earn while they learn,” we decided to take the lead nationally in advocating for large-scale government funding for internships that provide good pay, deep immersion in community work, and serious experiential education for college credit. We have already made significant progress — we succeeded in incorporating language into the Higher Education Act that would allocate more money for community-based internships by increasing funding for the Community Services set-aside of Federal Work Study. We are excited about the potential for policy change to leverage resources for CLP students and others like them, and look forward to sharing our progress in the next few years ahead.
While 2020 will be an important year we also know that the
need for progressive community change leaders goes well beyond election cycles.
The CLP Network will continue to support students like those featured in our
newsletters in the months and years ahead, as we strive towards building
a multi-ethnic, multi-racial, equitable and sustainable society where
justice triumphs over exploitation.
In solidarity,
Ken Rolling
Executive Director
The Community Learning Partnership
