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The energy was awesome, and I saw many attendees delighted with the workshops where they learned effective strategies to take back to their Neighborhood Councils. I heard a number of times people lamenting that they wanted to take multiple sessions in each time slot as well because our Congress Planning Committee came up with so many great ones. Shout out to Harbor Gateway North Neighborhood Council, who had 13 of their 17 board members in attendance!!
We also graduated our first class of Neighborhood Council Civic Youth at the Congress. Not only did our youth participants speak on a panel session about engaging youth, but Mayor Eric Garcetti brought them out to his closing session keynote where he praised them as the leaders of the future and of now before including them in the Congress group shot.
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I cannot thank our wonderful Congress of Neighborhoods Planning Committee, chaired by super Cindy Cleghorn, enough for their outstanding work. Major kudos to our staff, too, especially to the Jasmines of EmpowerLA – Neighborhood Empowerment Advocate and Congress lead, Jasmine Duckworth, for her hard work and grace under pressure, and Neighborhood Empowerment Advocate, Jasmine Elbarbary, who took her Civic High idea for recruiting and keeping youth in the Neighborhood Council system and developed it into Neighborhood Council Civic Youth with the support of the Mayor’s Innovation Team and Officer of Public Engagement. You ladies rock!
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You can read more about the Congress experience from Connie Acosta, Echo Park Neighborhood Council board member, and about the Neighborhood Council Civic Youth, which will now be a yearly program by EmpowerLA.
We have another big event coming up in the Valley tomorrow. The Valley Disaster Preparedness Fair will be held in Granada Hills. It’s a great event with many Neighborhood Councils participating. The LANCC will be holding their monthly meeting in Granada Hills so you can easily attend both. Councilmembers Jose Huizar and Marqueece Harris-Dawson, the Co-Chairs of City Council’s Homelessness and Poverty Committee, will be presenting on the City’s Comprehensive Homeless Strategy and on the November General Obligation Bond ballot measure, Proposition HHH, at the LANCC so you don’t want to miss it.
