When the Los Angeles Urban League’s 2005 State of Black Los Angeles report results were finally and fully digested by the community, it was clear that African Americans simply had to do something different to stem the tide of deterioration in inner city Los Angeles.  The Los Angeles Urban League has now launched a bold, new five-year Strategic Plan that focuses on three components - Advocacy, Leadership, and Neighborhood Change.
                       
The impact of our focus on leadership and advocacy to address the needs of our community has been significant.  As but one example of our accomplishments over just the past few months, due to the efforts of the League and its position in the Alliance for Equal Opportunity in Education, UCLA’s African American enrollment will more than double in the fall from the numbers one year ago.

In the same time frame, the League has held health fairs, focusing on some of our community’s most devastating illnesses, such as prostate cancer. Several hundred men were provided free testing in one day. The League recently provided nearly $45,000 in scholarships for young African American and Latino students to attend college and graduated another class from our stellar Head Start program, servicing more than 2,000 preschoolers and their parents. And the League is working with hundreds of youth to find summer employment. With the focus on leadership and advocacy, the LAUL has continued to meet the needs of more than 100,000 of our most underserved community members each year.

Beyond advocacy and leadership, in 2007 the Los Angeles Urban League added another important dimension to our model - Neighborhood Change.

The League is implementing a $25 million, 5-year neighborhood change initiative, called Neighborhoods@Work.  The 21st Century systemic change initiative will build a replicable model for neighborhood transformation by intensely focusing on changing outcomes in one 70-block area at a time. This initiative was launched first in South Los Angeles with the goal of simultaneously changing outcomes in education, employment, safety, health, and housing for the neighborhood’s 10,000 residents.  The long term intention is to replicate the model in other neighborhoods, predicated on success.

Myriad collaborations have been established and linked to the resources and capacity of the League to enable this initiative to soar - partnerships with community based organizations, faith institutions, businesses, academic institutions and the public sector. The League is brokering resources to the community and ultimately taking full accountability for delivering measurable changes across the five disciplines.

This 21st Century model for change was officially launched in April. In the first few months of implementation violent crime rates, which were more than 2.5 times the L.A. average in the initial neighborhood, have fallen by more than 24%.  Anti-gang programs are underway and dropout prevention and academic reinforcement programs have been launched at the local high school and feeder schools. Health programs and services are now flowing into the neighborhood.  And the League has raised more than $8 million in support of this exciting, new neighborhood based change model.

All of this has led to the most important initial outcome of all, namely that residents within the initial neighborhood have begun to express a renewed sense of hope about the future. That is perhaps the most important goal.

It is clear that none of this can be accomplished without the continued support of the community.  So, if you can, please join us in our efforts by joining the League in this effort. Become a member of the Los Angeles Urban League in 2007. 

You have our thanks in advance for that support.