Community Leadership and Advocacy Initiative
Erie House is an outspoken advocate for issues including education, immigrants’ rights, community technology legislation, child care policies, and college opportunities for undocumented students.
Recognizing advocacy as central to its mission, in 2006 Erie House launched its Community Leadership and Advocacy Initiative (CLAI). Generously funded by the Marguerite Casey Foundation, the CLAI increases Erie House’s ongoing efforts to train its participants to become leaders, and thus their own advocates.
Health Programs
Realizing the importance of health in the context of leadership, Erie is growing its health and leadership activities throughout Erie programs.
Erie House is committed to helping its employees, its participants, and its community enjoy better health, wellness, self-esteem, and confidence.
Among the programs supporting those goals are the following:
Super H "Healthy Kids Make Happy Kids": Helping 8-to-12-year-olds and their parents practice better nutrition, be more active, build their self-esteem, and do many other things that lead to better health.
Super H-itos: Building health and wellness among toddlers and preschoolers and their parents.
CHAT: Developing self-care skills among teenagers.
Health Promoters: Erie House employees design and manage innovative health programs for Erie staff and participants.
Erie Institute for Social Justice
In Fall 2006, Erie convened focus groups to identify the most pressing issues facing our community, and formulated a course of action for addressing these issues. The result is the Erie Institute for Social Justice, a training program launched in Spring 2007 that offers a hands-on, competence-based leadership and advocacy curriculum to community members.
Graduates of the Erie Institute for Social Justice take the lead in shaping Erie’s policy and advocacy agenda, organize fellow participants and neighbors to take appropriate action, and collaborate with community leaders to achieve goals. Erie House supports these community-led efforts by providing staff support and resources.
CLAI’s Objectives:
- Organization of community focus groups to gain awareness of the issues facing the low-income families we serve,
- Placement and support of new community leaders in leadership roles,
- Integration of advocacy efforts across Erie departments, and
- Development of collaborations as needed to most effectively support social transformation.
Equal Voice for Families
Beginning in January 2008, Erie House will take part in the Marguerite Casey Foundation's Equal Voice for America's Families Campaign. This national, year long campaign will develop and advance a national agenda that puts families first. Erie House will serve as a meeting place for organizing families and other key stakeholders to participate in the creation of this ambitious agenda.
For more information, please contact: Maureen Hellwig, Senior Director of Programs, via email or at 312-432-2249.
