Diversity Matters

LA LISC Assistant Program Officer spoke at the recent SCANPH Annual Conference on a panel entitled: Disrupting Decades of Inequity – Race & Homelessness. She spoke about the LISC AmeriCorps program and how it is creating a diverse talent pipeline for the community development field.

LISC’s AmeriCorps program is a job and mentorship program focused on growing a racially diverse pool of leaders who are from and reflect the demographics of the neighborhoods they are assigned to work within. For LISC, this program is a career pathway into community development and serves as an economic development strategy for the communities served.

This program allows individuals to come into the community development field who have not had a traditional path. Community Development was originally a movement where people learned on the job and made great strides. Now, we are professionalizing the field in such a way that the basis of entry is focused on having a traditional education.

We have seen that the basis of entrance is a Master’s degree to become an Assistant Project Manager at many affordable housing development organizations. We need to think about the people in the neighborhoods where we work and how we are getting them into the field to shape their own communities - how are we as a field developing career ladders in such a way that we get away from just having people of color working in administrative roles but moving to become project manager, chief operating officers, and CEOs. The LISC AmeriCorps program creates that ladder for the community development industry.

Checkout the photos from our recent AmeriCorps graduation ceremony. In this cohort, almost half the participants were placed in full-time positions in community development organizations.