2024 Key Dates
- Information Session: Thursday, August 1, 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. at The Community Foundation
- Applications due: Friday, August 16, 4:00 p.m.
- In-person group interviews: Monday and Tuesday, September 9-10, 7:00 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
- Cohort selection: Thursday, September 12
- Materials distributed: Thursday, September 12
-Complete 2024 training schedule with dates and time commitments
Who should apply?
New Haven, West Haven, East Haven or Hamden residents who have demonstrated a commitment to making a positive difference through resident engagement are eligible to apply. If you are eager to build skills, develop your capacity to increase your impact, and engage with other leaders in learning, practice, and project execution, you should apply to this program.
What skills and practices will you learn?
- Appreciating and using your personal strengths and core values.
- Building relational culture in your community and with other leaders.
- Understanding the resources and challenges involved in creating the community you want.
- Creating and using a group of allies to support you in your work.
- Designing and implementing a pilot project that will positively impact your community.
- Learning from your pilot how to modify or scale up your project.
- Developing and managing the human and material resources you need to produce effective positive impact.
What’s required of you? (What you give):
- Mandatory participation in all training sessions.
- Plan on the estimated hours per month required for building relational culture, small group work and coaching sessions after each training.
- Plan, develop, carry out, and evaluate a pilot project.
- Option to plan and develop a second project. Seek local resources to help support a your second project based on your experience with the pilot project. You could grow your pilot project to a bigger scale, develop a new project in a new community or work in collaboration with another leader you have met in the leadership program.
- Creative energy: learning, listening, imagining, building, realizing.
- Commitment: to yourself, to other participants, to the people you serve, to the city.
What’s offered? (What you get):
- Training: new frameworks, new skills, new practices.
- Ongoing connections with other participants and with your community.
- Support for pilot projects: Up to $500.
- Support for second-stage projects: up to $2500.
What’s the impact on you? (How you change):
- A more defined understanding of your purpose and intent for your community.
- Learning the value of collaboration.
- Supportive accountability.
- A broader understanding of how to fulfill your goals and purpose.
What’s the impact on your neighborhood and greater New Haven? (Why this matters):
- Relational connections: resiliency, understanding, resourcing, social change.
- Building self-sufficient communities.
- Creating self-supportive and sustainable opportunities within families, health and community services.
- Broadening the scope of programming possibilities within neighborhoods/communities.
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