An Update from CPL Ohio State Director Gavin Leonard

04.23.08

I’ve said time and again over the past few months that I am both excited and overwhelmed.  Being the single staff member for a statewide organization is a hefty task. 

As I’ve listened and learned over the course of the first several months, below are some of things I’ve heard, as well as some things I have done or plan to do.  It is my goal to make CPL as relevant to the state of Ohio as possible, so please, please contact me if you have thoughts or ideas about how I should proceed.

• Creating space to talk about racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and other oppressions is sorely needed.  I’m working to implement out loud conversation about these “isms” as a part of our curriculum and core competency on the same level as fundraising, messaging, or campaigns.
  
  
• Networks connecting diverse communities (people of color, low-income, GLBTQ, young people, etc.) to positions of leadership and power within progressive organizations need to be much more developed. Developing a pipeline of leadership and changing the face of the progressive movement is going to take a long time, but CPL can play a key role in making this happen (through programs like the New Leaders Fellowship and our State Political Leaders Fellowship, which will start in early 2009).
  
  
• There is significant interest for tailoring skill building and capacity building trainings for organizations across the state, especially in smaller non 3C-cities that typically receive less attention from national and statewide organizations (Dayton, Toledo, etc.).  I have access to a substantial amount of training material that is already developed and can be tweaked and/or overhauled to fit your organization’s needs.  Our 1 hour to 2 day trainings can be set up and run with your people in your place, so let me know if you are interested in training in any of our core competency areas.  I will then be working to find the folks who are interested in engaging through our long term, comprehensive programs, which we have found to be more effective than the one time opportunities.
  
  
• I need to be realistic about what I can accomplish. Initially, I had plans to visit the largest 8 cities and all regions of the state in the first 3 months, while flying solo.  But after going to cities 2-4 hours away and getting 20-50 names/contacts to follow up with, I realized there’s just no way I can do justice to “relationship building” with the amount of time I have at this point. So, please know that I – and staff that I hire in the coming months – will indeed be building real relationships and listening and connecting across the state, but that I had to pump the brakes a bit at the start.

There are of course many, many more thoughts and ideas I could share, but I will stop for now.  Hopefully, you find this kind of update useful and interesting.  Please let me know if you’d like to hear more (or less!) about something.

 I look forward to working with all of you in the coming weeks, months, and years!

- Gavin

To learn more about these and other programs, get in touch with Ohio State Director Gavin Leonard.