Organization: Inland Congregations United for Change
Mission: ICUC empowers people to participate in civic decision-making. ICUC employs community organizing to be a vehicle of social change. Our goals include community betterment objectives, increasing the civic capacity of our member congregations, and leadership development.
Activities: This year, ICUC leaders dedicated hundreds of hours working to support new programs in schools in the region. Our education campaign engaged 12 schools and 15 congregations in all 5 regions in three principal areas that support academic success and college readiness. These are district accountability for increased parent engagement, support for English learners, and increasing college readiness. We have won district support on all three issues and have strong participation in district efforts to dedicate funding to address these concerns. Inland parents, students, churches and academic officials joined together to work toward increasing high-school graduation and college-going rates. The Inland Empire P-16 Partnership for Education was formally unveiled Aug. 15. Beginning in preschool and through high school, the program seeks to engage parents to support academic success in the K-12 system and college readiness. ICUC serves as the convener of the partnership and advocates for policy and program changes which will increase parent engagement, A-G completion, college readiness, community college to four year university transfer rates, and decrease the need for remediation for incoming college students. Our health access campaign engages 21 congregations in all five regions and is four months into a yearlong process to enroll 10,000 ICUC leaders in expanded health care coverage and to address local and statewide issues that restrict access to health care. This campaign is coordinated with 12 PICO affiliates in California.Our racial justice campaign began 6 months ago and is still in the process of engaging more congregational leadership. Currently we have 7 schools and two congregations working to change school discipline policies with success in four districts and we are building leadership to contribute to the PICO National campaign to stop mass incarceration.In our immigrant rights campaign we have 18 congregations actively supporting national immigration reform and local issues related to immigrant rights. We play a lead role in the state and national campaigns on this issue and contributed to two major legislative victories this year and three local policy changes.ICUC leaders and congregations have dedicated thousands of hours to support immigration reform for millions of immigrants. We have had participation in the organizing efforts from over 12 member congregations and participation from over 1,200 Catholic parishioners. We have involved the faith community in over 50 different activities including pilgrimages, fasting, prayer, press conferences, canvassing and phone banking.
NTEE category: Community Improvement & Capacity Building
Secondary category: Education