Play & Learn L.A.’s Board of Directors are comprised of a number of community organizers. We believe in Play & Learn L.A. because it makes sense, not because we believe we can solve someone else’s problems. The Creed of Our Board of Directors is simple: Play & Learn L.A. will only survive & thrive if the community believes in it and invests in it.
We have certain skills and resources we can invest into Play & Learn L.A., but the success or failure of Play & Learn L.A. depends on the community. Every step along the way, Play & Learn L.A. will only move forward if interest and support for it in the community builds and can sustain this enterprise.
To that end, we are committed to the following:
1. Establishing a dialogue with community-based organizations in any neighborhood in which we can find a potential location for a Play & Learn L.A. site. Once an appropriate location is secured we will hold meetings with church groups, neighborhood associations, PTA’s, Boys & Girls Club, pediatricians and family doctors, existing community or activist groups, day care and pre-school operators and families, service groups and any other entity that has meetings of concerned citizens.
2. Inviting interested community members to join a Community Advisory Council, provide training to this Council, and then empower the Council to shape the creation and operation of the Play & Learn L.A. Center. The Community Advisory Council would be responsible for picking the Galleries from the Master Gallery & Design Book, shaping usage policies, engendering community involvement in the Center, establishing partnerships, and ensuring the Center meets the community’s needs and maintains a visionary approach to working with the community’s families.
3. Placing a member of the Community Advisory Committee onto the Play & Learn L.A. Board of Directors.
4. Joining with the Community to continually shape the vision and mission of Play & Learn L.A. as it adapts to the evolving and unique needs and opportunities of its host community.
5. Forming a Youth Advisory Committee to give local children a voice in the Play & Learn L.A. Center.
6. Promoting as much in-kind services, work and volunteerism in the community as possible and thus rely on the expertise, talent and people-power of our community.
7. Staffing the Play & Learn L.A. Center with as many qualified community members as possible and providing training for those who express great commitment to the Center and its goals but who may not yet have the requisite experience.
8. Believing that when the community has shaped Play & Learn L.A.’s vision and made it their own, they will invest in it. Accordingly, we will make individual donors and family memberships to the Center a key component of our fundraising development plan. We will gauge our success in the community by our ability to enlist these individual donors and family memberships.
Submitted by: Scott McVarish
Comments