COMMUNITY BUILDING
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
LISC’s Healthy Communities Leadership Development Series is a component of the GO Neighborhood initiative to strengthen neighborhood and city-wide leadership in the Greater Houston Area. The series provides health-focused leadership development trainings and workshops to neighborhood-based leaders in understanding the social determinants of health and their impact, while equipping leaders with tools and knowledge to take action in addressing health inequities in their communities. The series include four leadership development tracks: Leading Together Workshops, an annual Civic Academy forum, the Training for Trainers Program and the Ambassador Class.
Our Reach
Training for Trainers
T4T is a 6-month, self-guided 6-session leadership training program for emerging leaders of the Greater Houston community. Selected leaders participate as a cohort and collaboratively learn about leadership, advocacy, and community building skills topics. LISC Houston opens an application to the program every year, follow us to keep track of application information and join a T4T cohort! The program currently has about 160 graduates, or “ambassadors” that continue to engage with program activities.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Houston LISC and its consulting partners developed a strategy for a legacy play: creating and disseminating a video series on a user-friendly distance learning platform enabling broader and ongoing use of training by community members, community-based organizations and agencies. This training is built from a curriculum focused on shared leadership development, health equity and the social determinants of health as through lines to support Houston neighborhoods.
Click here to sign up for the 2024 application announcement.
Leading Together Workshops
Leading Together Sessions are workshops open to all residents that provide T4T graduates the opportunity to practice their meeting planning and facilitation skills. Leading Together sessions follow the Community Building Toolkit designed by LISC and DIG In – topics include: Framing Community Building & Shared Leadership, Community Engagement & Team Building, Making Meetings Better: the art of facilitation & consensus building, Planning & long-term decision making.
Ambassador Class
Opportunity for T4T graduates to continue (1) building their leadership capacity, (2) engage in on-going community efforts, and (3) be part of a pool of facilitators available to support community engagement activities across neighborhoods.
Current offerings to Ambassador include: opportunity to serve on our Ambassador Advisory Board, review T4T applications, lead trainings, apply to annual small grants in support of capstone projects, quarterly ‘Leadership Is’ webinars and an annual reunion in which ambassadors have the opportunity to present on their community work.
Are you a T4T graduate? Reach out to Catie Licalzi at clicalzi@lisc.org to be added to the Ambassadors list.
Civic Academy Forum
Forum to engage city-wide policy setters and decision makers to break down a complex issue related to the social determinants of health and produce a roadmap for action. This approach builds capacity by planting seeds for relationship building and joint learning.