COMMUNITY COALITION FOR SUBSTANCE ABUSE PREVENTION & TREATMENT
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Mission Statement
We believe people are the creators of change. We believe we are more powerful united as a community than when acting alone. That’s why we bring community members together to build leadership, launch action campaigns, and create a unified voice for South L.A. Together we are transforming our schools, strengthening families and building a thriving community. Community Coalition works to help transform the social and economic conditions in South LA that foster addiction, crime, violence and poverty by building a community institution that involves thousands in creating, influencing and changing public policy.
About This Cause
Community Coalition was established in 1990 by Congresswoman Karen Bass and other local activists in the wake of the crack cocaine epidemic, which devastated the South LA community. The mission of the Coalition is to help transform the social and economic conditions in South Los Angeles that foster addiction, crime, violence and poverty by building a community institution that involves thousands in creating, influencing and changing public policy. To achieve its mission, Community Coalition embraces the following core functions: • Leadership Development – Enhancing the capacity of historically disenfranchised people to become empowered, responsible leaders who can initiate and lead efforts for long-term, sustainable change. • Education and Training – Developing the skills and knowledge needed to influence, shape and create the type of policies and programs that will improve the quality of life for South LA families. • Community Involvement – Uniting residents beyond racial and generational lines to become engaged in the civic life of their community and to use Community Coalition as a vehicle to transform the socioeconomic conditions of South LA. • Advocacy – Uniting people to work collectively to advocate on their own behalf for more equitable social and economic policies. • Contribute to the Building of a Social Movement – Generating and sustaining relationships and strengthening alliances with other organizations dedicated to social and economic equity. Community Coalition utilizes grassroots community organizing and policy advocacy as its core strategies. The Coalition seeks to transform and revitalize South LA by organizing residents in multi-generational, multi-racial campaigns. These campaigns involve members from each of the Coalition’s main programs: • The Communities Rising program organizes residents to address the root causes of crime without increasing incarceration by developing solutions that bring quality jobs, responsible businesses and safe streets to South LA; • South Central Youth Empowered thru Action (SCYEA) develops the next generation of leaders by organizing and training students to fight for educational justice in South LA and encouraging academic excellence; • Kinship In Action (KIA) organizes Relative Caregivers and launches campaigns to improve conditions for children in the care of relatives in South LA • The Prevention Network (PN), an alliance of local social service providers, increases and improves social service delivery for the most vulnerable residents with the goal of strengthening the local social safety net. • The Civic Engagement (CE) program engages and involves thousands of South LA residents in efforts to redistribute services and resources to improve the well-being of South LA families. The impact of the Coalition’s work is evidenced by its ground-breaking approaches to address community need that have changed the landscape on three key issues: • Public Safety & Crime Prevention: The Coalition has succeeded in shifting the public debate on crime and violence prevention from a reliance on punitive measures to focusing on the social, economic and environmental conditions that can promote and facilitate crime. Residents have won dramatic victories for their community – shutting down or winning corrective conditions on hundreds of liquor stores and motels, ensuring that city policies favor and include the community voice and fighting to create safe parks and bring recreational programming to their neighborhoods. • Foster Care/Relative Care: The Coalition led the ground-breaking charge to recognize Relative Caregivers as the healthiest and safest alternative when placing a child in a new home and has seen significant shifts in child welfare policy that recognize the value of kinship families and provide them with increased resources to meet the needs of the children in their care. In 2004, Community Coalition opened the Kinship In Action (KIA) Center -- the first kinship support center in South LA -- combining resources, self-care and respite activities with advocacy. Recently, the Coalition received one of seven national grants from the Department of Health & Human Services for an evidence-based demonstration project with kinship families. • Educational Justice: Community Coalition called on the Los Angeles Unified School District to raise its standards and teach a curriculum that would prepare students for college and the 21st century workforce. Through their efforts, students and parents have won policy mandating universal access to college prep courses, revamping suspension policies that disproprtionately impact students of color, and establishing a model for school funding based on equity. The Coalition has also implemented a successful Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School program for South LA youth, wehere thy develop literacy and leadeship skills.