As we wrapped up the recent board-staff planning retreat for the CAPACES Leadership Institute, we added up the programs on the Institute’s list for 2012. We knew we had a lot going on—more than half are already underway and few more will be shortly. But even we were surprised at the total number: twenty.
The program docket, including a one-paragraph description of each class, course or activity, fills four single-spaced pages—about five times the length of these occasional updates. We’ve picked out two to share. Both are brand new programs.
The first is one we call “TURNO” or “Talento Universitario Regresando a Nuestros Orígenes (University Talent Returning to Our Origins), creating a path for capable and motivated young folks to embrace and prepare for long-term movement leadership. Each fall, the Institute plans to recruit a dozen Woodburn High School juniors for sessions on leadership, movement history, and community service. The Institute will convene gatherings of TURNO cohorts during vacations to reinforce connections and to help them visualize their roles after graduation. We intend that TURNO will steadily increase the pool of new leaders, even assuming that many don’t return. TURNO will also expand the network of movement supporters, rooted in our communities, who go out into—and succeed in—the wider world.
CLI Programs Coordinator Abel Valladares has led recruitment of a pioneering group of TURNistas who are piloting and shaping the activities strategies. We hope and expect that they will continue in TURNO through next academic and help recruit the new cohort.
The second program we’d like to highlight is a research special project we call “Agricultural Wealth in the Mid-Willamette Valley: Who has created it and who controls it?” The challenge for CLI Communications and Grants Manager Ranfis Villatoro and two paid project interns, is to assemble stories and stats that compellingly convey the answers, and then shape the material in a popular education style class. That class will be incorporated into future offerings of CAPACES 101 (enrolling new staff and emerging leaders) and will likely grow into a course all its own This project is funded by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics at the University of Oregon as part of their “Capitalism and the Common Good” initiative.
In the months ahead we’ll describe other Institute courses. As of today, that’s only 18 more to go.