Dear Colleagues and Friends,

This year CCB is kicking off our first ever Giving Tuesday (Nov. 29) campaign to support our Leadership Academy! Training young leaders is core to what we do here at CCB and, while we might not be able to solve every systemic inequality in the short term, we can help ensure that diverse young leaders have the experience and tools needed to step up to the challenge when they graduate.

CCB’s young leaders make us who we are

CCB’s Leadership Academy started in 2018 with dynamic undergraduate and graduate students from up and down California. Like most internships, CCB’s student interns work on a variety of projects that offer an intro into policy research and advocacy, while building their resume and professional skill sets for the future. What sets us apart, though, is the responsibility and growth opportunities our students have, since the work they do is very real and very important. In the past students have authored original research, provided staffing and project management for our legislative advocacy, and helped to lead the redesign of our website.

Students also receive direct mentorship from staff as well the opportunity to grow and learn from the civil rights pioneers on our board and within our network. We see the transfer of hard-earned knowledge and wisdom from veteran advocates to students as essential to preparing the next generation of leaders for the challenges ahead.

Our students have graduated from schools including UCLA, California State University Northridge, UC Berkeley and UC Davis, and we look forward to expanding outreach to schools in the Midwest and East Coast in the coming year. After leaving us, CCB’s young leaders have gone on to jobs with affordable housing developers, prestigious fellowships like the Partnership for the Bay’s Future, nonprofits serving young people in the Bay Area, and graduate programs such as the USC Gould School of Law. If you haven’t been lucky enough to cross paths with any of our student leaders, take a moment to read about Hannah, Minhal, and Moorea, or Riena, or Esther’s time with us, what they learned, and why CCB’s Leadership Academy is worth investing in.

We need your help to resource this important work

It takes resources to sustain our leadership program, and we hope that this Giving Tuesday you can support CCB in our ability to do just that in 2023. CCB strongly believes that unpaid internships are unethical and bad both for students and the organizations that oversee them. We also believe that unpaid internships directly contribute to the exclusion and underrepresentation of low-income students and students of color in important fields like public policy and politics.

All donations raised through this year’s Giving Tuesday campaign will go directly to fund our ability to pay a wage that respects our students’ hard work as well as the reality of California’s high living-costs.

Thank you in advance for your generosity!

Sylvia Aguilar

COO, California Community Builders