Enlace
Enlace is a strategic alliance of low-wage worker centers, unions, and community organizations in Mexico and in the U.S. We partner with our member organizations in international campaigns to motivate abusive multi-sector transnational corporations to treat workers and communities with dignity and respect.
Enlace uses an integrated approach to organizing, creating unique campaign strategies while developing systems strengthening organizations internally. Our strategies often cross industrial and sector lines for reasons relating to both workforce development and campaign strategy.
In addition, the Enlace Institute presents trainings in strategic organization development that were developed over the many years of learning through our campaigns. Our collaborative brainstorming processes are useful for virtually all work groups in base-building organizations.
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Enlace Institute 2012
Peer Trainer Program
The Peer Trainer Program is starting a new class of leaders and staff of organizations that serve low wage communities. The peer trainers will learn strategic collaboration and planning tools that will continually improve the work of their organizations.
Attendance at workshops in the Peer Trainer Program is free. For more information about applying for the program please contact Enlace 213-284-3802 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Basic Workshops for 2012:
Proactive Plan (Proactive strategic planning or new campaign creation)
This process is used to make a plan for up to one year. Using this framework the team identifies a fundamental change that it must make to achieve a significant objective and then creates a strategy to achieve this change. The results inoculate the team from falling into a reactive mode. One variation is effective for creating a plan for a new campaign. An individual can also use this framework on his/her own.
Dates: Mexico City: October 9- 10; New York City: November 13-14; Portland, OR: December 4- 5
Advanced Workshop for 2012: For top leadership of organizations serving low-income communities.
Arrow through the Apple (Long term strategic plan, founding plan, leader plan)
This process is used to make an initial plan when starting an organization or program, or for developing a strategic plan of 5 to 10 years. It can also be used to create a 10-year plan for an individual leader that is aligned to the needs of the organization. It is a modification of a strategic planning process developed by corporate consultant Charles Krone.
Dates: Mexico City, October 11- 12; New York: November 16- 17; Los Angeles: January 23- 24, 2013
Peer Trainer Program On Third Year Home Stretch
2011 saw a new class of Peer Trainers in the Enlace Institute. They come from organizations serving low wage communities across the United States and Mexico. This year we welcomed more than 55 new participants. These leaders learned and applied strategic collaboration tools that substantially advanced the social justice work in their communities. The Peer Trainer Program is funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation.
In addition to the basic curriculum of the Organizing Cycle (short term planning), the Rap (used for recruiting and motivating), and the Evaluation Star (evaluation and analysis of programs and activities), we are offering an advanced framework for executive directors and graduates of the 2009-2010 Peer Trainer Program. This framework, Four Sages, is a collaborative brainstorming process that is useful specifically for top leadership teams when the group is confronting a crisis with the potential to destabilize the whole organization or is facing an unanticipated barrier to its strategy.
Peer Trainer Program Grows
The Enlace Institute’s Peer Trainer Program, is showing a 41% increase in enrolled participants in its second two-year training series. Forty-one organizers and leaders from twenty-six organizations made up the first group of Peer Trainers who learned to design and facilitate strategic planning processes and team work evaluations in the Program. As of now, fifty-seven organizers and leaders from forty-three organizations have enrolled in the second group of Peer Trainers in the program, which was launched in 2009 with the support of a grant from the Ford Foundation,
The new crop of participants is currently completing the first round of workshops in Mexico City, Portland and New York.
The Enlace Institute is also offering an advanced planning workshop in 2011. There are still openings in this series, which is open to graduates of the first Peer Trainer class, Executive Directors, other management staff and board members of low-wage worker organizations and their allies. Please contact Daniel Carrillo at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more information.
Enlace’s Peer Training Program 2009- 2010
We have now completed the second year of Enlace’s Peer Trainer Program. More than 35 leaders from organizations that serve low-wage communities who participated in our Enlace Institute Peer Trainer Program learned and applied strategic collaboration tools that substantially advanced the social justice work in their communities.
Here are a few examples:
Aquilina Soriano of Pilipino Workers Center in Los Angeles used what she learned in the Peer Trainers Program to gain access for marginalized members of her community to participate in the Green Workforce Cooperative in L.A.
Enlace Institute launches its Second Year!
In the year 2010 the Institute will teach the Organizing Cycle and Proactive Plan frameworks to peer trainers in Mexico and the US. Both frameworks help groups develop strategic plans, one for the short term, the other for up to a year. To read about them, please visit our training section. Thus far we have completed the first session of year two, teaching the Organizing Cycle to peer trainers in Bend, Oregon, New York City and Queretaro, Mexico.
The Institute is proving to have a significant impact on the work of the peer trainers and their organizations. We have been successful in our goals of helping to build low wage organizations so that they could make significant gains in their own fights.
2009 Enlace Institute Year-End Report
In 2009 Enlace realized a long-held dream. Last spring we were able to start the Enlace Institute. Its purpose is to develop strategic planning and organizational development expertise in low-income community organizations and in the movement for social and economic justice in the United States and Mexico. Among our many goals for the Enlace Institute, two are crucial: improving the economic standing and the leadership skills of low-wage workers and strengthening and stabilizing low-wage workers organizations.