Community Power & Shared Leadership

Building community power through collective leadership, healing, and liberation

Our Understanding

We understand that power is often concentrated in systems that exclude and oppress our communities. True change requires not only addressing immediate needs, but also shifting the structures that create inequality. Our approach centers collective leadership, community knowledge, and lived experience. By building relationships rooted in trust, mutual aid, and shared responsibility, we create pathways for our community to lead, organize, and reclaim power. We believe that lasting transformation comes from within the community—through connection, healing, and the ability to shape our own futures.

How We Do This

We build community power through collective leadership, organizing, and shared responsibility rooted in lived experience. Our work is guided by community members who understand the challenges we face and lead efforts to address them through collaboration, trust, and mutual support.

Through education, advocacy, and community-driven action, we create opportunities to challenge systems, shift power, and build more equitable futures together.

Our Plan

Collaborative Leadership & Community Resilience

By nurturing grassroots activism and emphasizing horizontal leadership, Presente! strengthens bonds within our community. Through these collective efforts, we're reclaiming power and creating space for everyone to have a seat at the table

Elevating Community Awareness

Storytelling and community learning equip us to redirect resources for a better food system. Empowering community members at the forefront changes the narrative, emphasizing community-driven solutions.

How We Build Community Power

Explore how we build awareness, leadership, and collective power within our community.

  • We believe awareness is a powerful tool for change. Through storytelling, community education, and shared reflection, we create space to better understand the systems that shape our lives and the inequities within them.

    Our work helps surface the historical and structural forces that have impacted access to land, resources, and opportunity, while reconnecting our community to ancestral knowledge and lived experience.

    By strengthening this collective understanding, we build the foundation for action—equipping our community to question dominant narratives, recognize injustice, and work toward more equitable systems.

  • Leadership at Presente! is not about hierarchy, but about collaboration, community, and genuine engagement. Those most impacted by inequities are at the center of guiding and shaping the work.

    From La Despensa Solidaria to statewide advocacy efforts, community members actively co-design, lead, and implement initiatives. This ensures our work remains grounded in lived experience and responsive to real needs.

    By creating opportunities for community members to step into leadership roles, we strengthen long-term capacity and build a shared sense of responsibility and collective direction.

  • Our resilience is rooted in a shared vision grounded in ancestral traditions and the understanding that our liberation is interconnected.

    At Presente!, we work to reawaken these connections by creating spaces where individuals feel seen, valued, and supported. Whether through gatherings, programs, or moments of crisis response, our work reinforces belonging and collective strength.

    We recognize that our greatest resource is our people—their knowledge, leadership, and commitment to transformation. Through this work, we nurture confidence, connection, and the ability for our community to shape its own future.

  • We recognize that many of the barriers our community faces are rooted in systems designed to exclude and marginalize. These systems often reinforce the idea that inequity is something we must accept.

    Through education, advocacy, and organizing, we work to challenge these structures and shift power. This includes efforts ranging from closing healthcare access gaps to advocating for equitable access to resources and services.

    We also engage in dialogue with local organizations and institutions to ensure the Latinx community is represented and has equitable access to support.

    By combining community knowledge with collective action, we work toward building systems that reflect our values, needs, and shared vision for the future.