By, Ruel Nolledo | Freelance Writer
June 27, 2024
Voices filled the conference space at Saint Sophia’s — a quiet, persistent murmur until you drew closer to one of the discussion tables, where the voices grew louder, taking on a collective life of their own.
“… I just think ‘culturally affirming service’ is a very personal experience,” one participant said. “What might feel affirming to one person might not to someone else.”
“Culture, I think, is grounded in the experience and perspectives of communities that we serve,” said another participant. “We actually co-design with communities when it comes to strategies and models.”
At the other eight tables, each one focused on a specific topic — Housing, Early Childhood Education, Healthy Foods, and more — the conversations were just as spirited and candid, never contentious. Some voices were soft yet clear, while others were full to bursting with passion and determination. Still others were measured and precise, while others occasionally broke with emotion. All of them with something meaningful and valuable to say. And a convener who wanted to listen.
More than 150 individuals traveled from cities throughout Los Angeles County — some
even carpooling all the way from the Antelope Valley — to raise their voices at an all-day stakeholder session hosted by First 5 LA. The agency had reached out to them to help answer one essential question: How do we help promote the best future for L.A. County’s youngest children?
The question isn’t a rhetorical one. Last November, First 5 LA’s Board of 
Commissioners approved the agency’s 2024-29 Strategic Plan, with new goals that focus on basic needs, nurturing relationships and environments, and access to resources that promote well-being, lifelong learning and success. The stakeholder gathering was a crucial step in the implementation of the plan, focusing on the development of the tactics — the programs, projects and initiatives — that First 5 LA will utilize to achieve the goals.
It’s not an easy task, noted First 5 LA President and CEO Karla Pleitéz Howell, especially when identifying the best tactics means balancing out an array of different considerations.
“There are two tensions in the conversations,” said Pleitéz Howell earlier in the day during her welcome address. “First, there’s the tension of what we can and need to be real about — what families need and what our communities need.
“But at the same time,” she added meaningfully, “we can also dream. Figure out what our kids need to thrive.”
The gathering represented a sea change in how First 5 LA is approaching the concept of community engagement. In years past, community residents typically played a crucial but limited role in the development of the agency’s strategic plans. With the new strategic plan though, First 5 LA is making a concrete effort to center the community in the process. For the first time, community members — parents, community leaders, advocates, child care providers, program and policy experts, people with lived experience and more — are playing an active role by sharing their knowledge and expertise that will inform the development of tactics.
It’s a crucial step forward for any public organization, said Rigo Rodriguez, one of
the consultants supporting First 5 LA in its strategic planning. “This kind of approach to engaging communities sparks transformational thinking. It can be a valuable asset in guiding how and where to invest your resources.”
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Identifying more meaningful ways of engaging with the community has been a priority throughout First 5 LA’s strategic planning process. At a recent First 5 LA Board meeting, commissioners noted the importance of uplifting the voices of those who are often heard the least in policy and planning conversations.
“If we’re looking to the community for help in developing both the factors and the tactics,” said Commissioner Alejandra Albarran Moses, “then I think we have to have families with a variety of lived experiences there to understand what the possibilities even are.”
It was a sentiment that resonated with First 5 LA staff, Rodriguez told the Board. “They’re working to shift from episodic engagement to continuous engagement,” he explained. “That’s a shift where it’s not just about holding one event, and then that’s it; we’re done. Rather, it’s about using these events to create new networks, new standards of engagement.”
This new direction in community engagement has its roots in the work undertaken through Best Start, First 5 LA’s largest and longest-running investment in community engagement. Joaquin Calderon, First 5 LA’s deputy director of Communities, explains how a number of themes emerged throughout their Best Start work. These include the importance of power building for residents and parents; the need to elevate the community voice and create conditions for collective action; and the value in building a network to support improved results for young children.
“Working in partnership with communities has been critical to the success of Best Start efforts,” Calderon told Commissioners, “Because families and residents are knowledgeable about the challenges that children and families experience in their community and the solutions that are likely to be successful.”
This way of thinking also informs another significant shift for First 5 LA, one where all of the agency’s activities — even Finance and Contracts — are centered in the community. The result is an intentional all-hands-onboard approach when it comes to events like this convening.
“It’s not just one department or a couple of departments,” observes Calderon as he surveys the room. “All of us recognize that how we partner with the community, how we show up as a public agency, really determines our ability to reach our goal of realizing the full potential of our children.”
Also at the convening is First 5 LA Finance Director Raoul Ortega, who mentions that
this new approach to community engagement opens up a number of new opportunities to improve the agency’s work.
“The emphasis First 5 LA is placing on community engagement is such an important way of ensuring a collective understanding of the needs of young children, families and communities,” he said. “At the same time, these discussions bring other important conversations with community members to the forefront. Including focused conversations on elements of the strategic plan and the changing fiscal reality with declining Proposition 10 funding. First 5 LA is coming to this work with a shared commitment for the greatest possible impact for the county’s young children and families and making strategic and fiscally aligned decisions for every child to thrive.”
This event is just the beginning, Calderon reports. Already, First 5 LA staff is hard at
work on putting together a second convening in August that will hopefully draw as many as 300 community members. To increase accessibility and convenience, the gathering will most likely take place online. There is much to be done, but everyone is set on bolstering this new kind of community engagement to improve outcomes for young children.
“We’re going to make sure we center these conversations,” Pleitéz Howell states plainly. “All of us at First 5 LA firmly believe that we can create a meaningful impact through our strategic plan, by building a social movement that centers kids and families and not an afterthought in budgets in Sacramento.”
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It’s late in the day. At one of the tables, a discussion facilitator is rallying stakeholders as they head into the next phase of their tactics identification activity.
“We want these tactics to make a real difference,” she says. “That doesn’t happen without you.”
