ICYMI: LISC LA Community Partners Inclusive Action and SLATE-Z Featured by LISC National
4.24.2020
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LISC StoriesEconomic Development
At LISC, we help our partners expand their resources to create high impact solutions, strengthen inclusive communities, and create change. In Los Angeles, those changes have been meaningful, and their impacts have been an inspiration to community development on a larger scale.
That is why LISC LA is excited to announce that two of our community partners – Inclusive Action for the City and the South Los Angeles Transit Empowerment Zone (SLATE-Z) – have been featured in the recent LISC National report on capacity building for equitable community development.
Inclusive Action is a community-based lending organization with a focus on low-income community development using advocacy, equitable urban planning, and economic initiatives. Recently, the organization co-founded the LA Street Vendor Campaign, which led to the successful legalization and decriminalization of street vending throughout the city and state. Continuing its support for small businesses in low-income communities, Inclusive Action created the Semi’a Fund (Seed Fund), a low-interest microloan program that provides funding not usually accessible from traditional lenders.
Fernando Guadarrama, founder of the OC Tacos food trailer, applied for one of these loans. With the support of our community partner, Gudarrama was able to buy his trailer and set up business all over Los Angeles – he regularly caters for groups of 300 now, and wakes up at 5am every morning to get fresh ingredients from the market in his home town of Anaheim.
Fernando Guadarrama with a customer outside of his food trailer, OC Tacos.
Another of LISC LA’s community partners, SLATE-Z, was featured in the LISC National report for their work in building economic opportunity in low-income communities. SLATE-Z is a coalition of over 70 partners working in South LA to revitalize neighborhoods and communities by improving existing public transit infrastructure and advocating for policy reform. In 2016, the organization successfully applied for a Promise Zone designation under HUD, which enhanced its organizing capacity and established preference points for certain federal grants. SLATE-Z also lobbied for the creation of a city Chief Procurement Officer, which has been beneficial in increasing access to small businesses.
The LISC National report highlights the importance of Inclusive Action and SLATE-Z’s initiatives in uplifting underserved and low-income communities, and the impact LISC LA’s resources have on building their capacity and effectiveness. In the past 18 months alone, LISC funding has helped Inclusive Action to more than triple its microloan capacity. Through support from our HUD Section 4 and our Wells Fargo Diverse Community Capital funding, Inclusive Action now has the resources to provide meaningful community equity.
SLATE-Z Resource Development Associate, Alexia Armstrong Cortés, discusses plans for South LA traffic safety improvements with LADOT team members.
At SLATE-Z, LISC has served on the Steering Committee and co-chaired the Economic Activity Workgroup, which has been instrumental in supporting SLATE-Z’s strategic development and connecting them with other community organizations and resources. Via our JP Morgan Chase ASCEND LA funding, LISC LA has provided SLATE-Z the capacity necessary to move forward with their ideas in the community.
At LISC LA, the impact of these organizations is a return on investment – we support innovative partners like Inclusive Action and SLATE-Z in building their capacity, so they can do the same for the communities that support them.
Building Capacity, Changing Systems
This LISC research report looks at efforts of intermediaries to advance equity considering the needs of local organizations and also citywide actors and the public sector. The goal is to learn how intermediaries can build the capacity of entire systems to promote equitable outcomes.
