Community Leadership Learning Initiative
Nexus Community Partners (Nexus) has been dedicated to building more engaged and powerful communities of color for more than 17 years. In all our work we are intentional about preparing both individual leaders and organizations, as well as the systems themselves, to integrate these new leaders and networks, all under the lens and approaches to racial equity. Nexus leads by example to acknowledge mutual dependency and mutual responsibility. We listen and hear that at the heart of the struggle is a rebalancing of power—economic, political, and social. At Nexus, we leverage our influence as a bridging partner to co-create with community and institutions. Nexus’ distinct role as an intermediary serves as a vehicle to bring partners at every level, every sector, and every cultural community together to design and implement solutions to persistent challenges.
Community Leadership Learning Initiative (CLLI) is a story-based learning community that lifts up silenced narratives of collective, community leadership. Our storytelling spaces and learning community attempts to reclaim collective, community leadership that is neglected. The stories and storytellers strengthen a community’s capacity to advocate for itself and help create more equitable policies and systems. CLLI respects the variety of ways that knowledge is practiced and expressed. We take an integrated approach, giving our leaders the capacity to wrestle with these issues themselves—in dialogue with each other, interested communities and stakeholders, and funders, as appropriate.
Our goal is to deepen collective understanding of community-driven leadership, while raising the visibility and demonstrating the value of this powerful work to the field of philanthropy and the broader ecosystem of leadership and community development. To do that, we explored three vital questions:
What does collective leadership look like (when operating from a cultural context in lived and historic experiences of power and privilege)?
How does a community have authorship of their lives and future?
What are the conditions and supports that allow natural community systems to flourish and evolve?
Overarching Findings
Through collaborative design with multiple partners and stakeholders, Nexus facilitated iterative storytelling spaces that explored leadership that springs from communities grappling with health inequities across racial, ethnic, geographic, and economic contexts. Four grantee partners and over 150 individual community leaders came together to share collective practices that help us see what leadership looks like when it is grounded in each community’s unique cultural context. Our learning journey focused on foundational practices and necessary conditions for community leadership.
These statements resonated with our learning community, practicing community leadership.
All members are leaders.
People are the authors of their own lives.
People can and do practice transformation in their lives, relationships, and communities.
We must work collectively to understand the reality they seek to transform.
People are adaptive, innovative, and resilient, despite constraints.
We share power based in cultural practices and group dynamics.
These principles may ring true in their simplicity. While we can understand and accept the truth in these statements, they can feel removed from the “real work” of deciding who gets what resources. We need to challenge this disconnect by understanding and recalibrating what’s mine, yours, and ours. In order for collective, community leadership to thrive, we need to lead by example and foster environments of, and participate in, the iterative practice of being in “right relationship” with each other.
Community leadership is a deeply human part of our existence, to the extent that we take its co-creation for granted. Instead, we tend to break the whole into parts as a way to understand complexity.
It is clear that person-centered leadership is so ingrained that it takes unlearning to fully realize our collective aspects—not just one’s role in a group, but the group’s way of being together.
Outstanding Questions
Community leadership is simple and complex; community leadership is built and practiced collectively, in our everyday acts of belonging. How can we (organizations and institutions) be in right relationship—of mutual support and accountability—to co-create collective, community leadership?
How can we engage with others to move in rhythm, and honor dynamic relationships, to lead by example? How do we set prescient patterns that expand community leadership?
Lead Contact
Sida Ly-Xiong
slyxiong@nexuscp.org | 651.231.2580
Sida Ly-Xiong has served in the public and nonprofit sectors for over 15 years. Using participatory methods, Sida develops evaluative processes to advance equity and accountability. In a previous role, Sida was a Community Engagement Coordinator at the Minnesota Dept. of Health, working with public health teams and health policy. Sida helped community health initiatives apply a racial equity lens in their work, particularly by building authentic relationships in and with communities they serve. Sida currently serves as Chair of the Program in Health Disparities Research community-academic advisory board at the University of Minnesota Medical School and is the Chair of the Ramsey County Library Board. In the past, Sida was involved with Asian Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy, Open Cities Health Center Board, and the Project 515 Finance Committee. Sida holds a Master’s of Science degree in Science, Technology and Environment Policy from the Humphrey School for Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.
Nexus is available to provide strategic guidance and consultation in the areas of community engagement, leadership, community wealth building, organizational wellness, program development, and more. Contact us to learn more about how we can support your efforts to build more engaged and powerful communities.
