CO- Boulder, Recruitment key to finding minority leaders
Boulder, Boulder County: Recruitment key to finding minority leaders
Programs aim to encourage civic engagement
By Heath Urie Camera
Posted: 10/24/2009 09:58:00 AM MDT
Many Boulder city officials, past and present, agree that more needs to be done to recruit Hispanics, Latinos and other minorities into local government.
Realizing that finding and providing leadership opportunities to those underrepresented groups has been difficult over the years, there's a renewed push at the city and county levels to reach out to potential minority leaders.
The Boulder-based Community Foundation in June launched the Boulder County Leadership Fellows Program in an effort to recruit a diverse group of people into leadership roles.
"We had several good, strong leadership-development programs but many of them were not really achieving all their diversity goals," said Morgan Rogers, the civic forum director for the Community Foundation.
The program grew out of a 2008 survey that concluded enrollment costs prohibited many people of color from participating in leadership cultivation classes, and that Boulder County lacks opportunities for diverse groups of people to have mentoring relationships with local leaders.
Rogers said the first batch of 21 people, recruited from the business, religious and neighborhood sectors, are working on creating a vision statement about "what leadership in Boulder County could be" with new voices and participation.
Another program finding its feet is the city of Boulder's "Immigrant Advisory Committee," a group tasked with reviewing local, state and national policies and reporting to the city manager about how they affect Boulder's growing immigrant population.
The program began as an experiment in 2007, pulling together a group of seven U.S. citizens and non-citizens from Brazil, Germany, Iran, Mexico and Syria. The group came up with a laundry list of ways the city could better include underrepresented populations, including:
Providing more city information in other languages, and hiring more Spanish-speaking staff;
Better publicizing affordable housing programs;
Including larger homes in affordable-housing programs to accommodate larger families; and
Providing discounted passes for recreational activities for those who can't afford such services.
"The United States has always been a nation of immigrants, and the contemporary experience of being an immigrant is very different than for other Boulder residents," said Carmen Atilano, a staff liaison to the committee. "There's language and cultural barriers, and I think that since we are the dominant culture we have that responsibility to reach out to those sectors and invite their participation."
But some argue that Boulder's voters have made that participation more difficult.
In 2004, Boulder's Council Charter Revision Committee decided not to adopt recommendations that non-U.S. citizens should be allowed to serve on city boards and commissions.
The city last year took the issue to voters, who narrowly defeated a measure that would have allowed non- citizens who were 18 or older and had lived in the city for at least a year to serve on boards and commissions.
City Councilwoman Angelique Espinoza said the measure would have been a good step toward showing that Boulder is open to Latino participation, in particular.
"There are many people living in our community who aren't able to get citizenship," she said. "Because of our broken immigration system, it takes many years, decades even, to get citizenship."
Boulder County, meanwhile, is also continuing its efforts to recruit people of color to serve on local boards and committees, through its People Engaged in Raising Leaders program.
The county-sponsored program focuses on empowering people of color to participate and become more involved in community civics. It's only 2 years old, but organizers say the effort is paying off.
"Our main goal is to get them more engaged in those positions," program manager Perla Delgado said. "It truly diversifies the boards that represent the communities that these individuals live in."
Contact Camera Staff Writer Heath Urie at urieh@dailycamera.com.
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