The Blue Line Corridor (BLC) Civic Leadership Institute is an opportunity for community investors (residents, local business owners, community organizations, elected officials and other partners) to gather and learn more about how to become engaged civic participants. Tailored to the residents of Capitol Heights, Fairmount Heights, Seat Pleasant, Glenarden, District Heights and the unincorporated areas along the Blue Line Corridor (neighborhoods connected by Central Avenue), this program offers a comprehensive approach to community development combining advocacy around arts, zoning, health, transportation, environmental justice, community capitals. Specifically, this program will support you to:
- Learn about and engage in the civic and development process in Prince George’s County
- Discover effective and creative advocacy tools used to support community organizing and practice using these tools
- Build connections with friends, neighbors, and public officials to gather around shared interests
PROGRAM BENEFITS
Participants get to join an exciting cohort of neighbors and get great benefits including:
- Receive a $200 stipend upon successful completion of the program (for non-elected officials)
- Meet elected official and other community leaders who help shape your neighborhood
- Present your recommendations and solutions for improving your community
- Childcare, transportation, and translation assistance will be provided for participants
PROGRAM GOALS
This program is designed to prepare residents to become advanced community advocates for healthy and sustainable neighborhoods. Our hope, is that through this program, we will be a cohort of community advocates ready and prepared to implement direct solutions to enhance their neighborhoods. Through this program participants will:
- Increase their knowledge about the land-development process in Prince George’s County
- Feel confident that they can implement their own community advocacy or placemaking strategy and build trust with community and leaders
- Join and actively participate with local community-based organization
- Collaborate to implement ideas (events, tactical urbanism, cultural place-keeping and placemaking) that
serve as a call-to-action for mobilization around the local policy issues
Success would mean residents in greater Capitol Heights have more power, in light of looming redevelopment, to influence the planning and zoning process and voice their needs. Additionally, success would be participant leaders with the expertise to explain, train and mobilize within and beyond their community about local land-use policy aligned with their community development goals.
WEEKLY SESSIONS
The Blue Line Corridor Civic Leadership Institute is a 6-session program, with a culminating event that meets once a week on Saturdays.
- Session 1: Landscape of Prince George’s County
- Session 2: Citizen and Community Data
- Session 3: Building Equitable Development
- Session 4: Tools of Local Development
- Session 5: Community Advocacy Strategies
- Session 6: Case Studies in Action
- Session 7: Culminating Experience & Formal Presentations