Gang Reduction Youth Development (GRYD)
Foundation Community Organizing Training
Project Type: CREATE IMPACT
THE NEED
The GRYD Foundation supports efforts within the City of Los Angeles that reduce gang violence and strengthen individuals, families, and communities. CauseIMPACTS was hired to develop and provide Community Organizing Trainings for 352 Youth Squad members hired to facilitate the City of LA’s GRYD Summer Night Lights Program that keeps LA parks open for extended hours as a tactic to reduce gang violence and build community.
CAUSEIMPACTS' SOLUTION
CauseIMPACTS developed and provided a series of community organizing trainings that prepared youth squad members to more efficiently and holistically engage the communities in which they work and empowered them to become active agents of change. The trainings were part of an initiative to build more community organizing into the City’s GRYD Program and provided a valuable platform upon which to expand the program.
“Jessica did an excellent job using personal examples from her time organizing mixed with historical campaign examples in LA to help us understand organizing! Before this training I did not know how to talk to strangers, much less organize a community to act. Jessica gave us the tools, tactics, and practice needed for us to go out and be organizers.””