May 29, 2013

Join the CCC Family! Apply Now for the 66th Community Leadership Course!

A site visit during one of CCC's first Community Leadership Courses

Since it was formed in 1961, CCC’s Community Leadership Course has transformed thousands of New Yorkers into trained advocates with a lifelong dedication to making NYC a better place for children and families. Every year, approximately 20 adults spend ten consecutive weekly sessions at CCC and “in the field” visiting an array of public and private programs and services throughout the five boroughs and seeing first-hand the obstacles NYC children face and then learning about  the issues in depth from CCC Policy Staff, and from discussing site visits with their peers.

CLC graduates are their own large family.  Participants have included philanthropists, doctors, ministers, lawyers, foundation staff, Board members and staff of non-profits, writers, community organizers, social workers, and relatives, friends and colleagues of previous CLC graduates, among others. Many have used their course experience to enrich their work or volunteer expertise and many have remained involved with CCC, becoming Board and Advocacy Council Members, advocating for NYC children and recruiting new students to take the course.

In the fifty-three years since the CLC was created, enthusiasm for it has never waned. At the 2012 Celebration Breakfast, Alex Herzan (two-time graduate of the course and the recipient of CCC’s 2012 Eleanor Roosevelt Award) encouraged everyone in the audience to “add it to their bucket list.” Of her experience, Alex said “It’s hard to see the needs of those that are not always right in front of us – people struggling for a better life every day. The beauty of the course is that it takes you to the organizations where the needs are being addressed by dedicated people working for the city’s most vulnerable. “

Recruitment is currently underway for the 66th Community Leadership Course. Would you or someone you know like to become a more informed advocate for children?

• Download the application now!
• Read or share Alex Herzan’s great speech on the Course.
• Visit the CLC page of our website or share it with your friends and colleagues.

To quote Alex Herzan (on CCC Founder Eleanor Roosevelt):

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home – so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; where he works… Without concerted citizen action close to home we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.”

This truth has become all too clear to me in the years since I took the course in 1983 and in taking it again now in 2012. To save the world, we have to pay attention to those who are right in front of us.

Tags
Community Leadership Course, Effective Advocacy

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