Milwaukee Succeeds Makes Community Engagement a Cornerstone

What does it mean to authentically engage with the community? That’s a question Milwaukee Succeeds has been seeking to answer for the past few years – particularly since shifting priorities to focus on early childhood education (ECE) and high school success.

With these two new focus areas came a new strategic plan, one that emphasizes racial justice, shifting power to lived experience partners and changing systems that impede education equity. In the process, it became clear that the typical way of operating wouldn’t work – and wouldn’t result in the systems transformation we sought.

According to Catina Harwell-Young, Director of Engagement and Culture, since nonprofits are mostly led by staff without firsthand experience of the issues they’re trying to solve, they often take the easy way out. This means informing the community rather including them, consulting them after the agenda has been set, and reporting back with the most favorable data.

Milwaukee Succeeds is taking a different path, one focused on building meaningful relationships with youth and families, learning what they need and using that information to better advocate for educational resources. To do this work well, we knew we needed to invest in our capacity, which would allow us to build bigger, stronger coalitions of youth and families.

“This required us to bring on dedicated staff to design and execute strategies that would build and strengthen our relationships with community stakeholders,” says Catina.

Sebastián Fuentes,
Community Engagement Manager

The Community Engagement Team

Enter Milwaukee Succeeds’ two new backbone team members: Sebastián Fuentes, Community Engagement Manager, and Biluge Ntabala, Community Engagement Fellow. Their addition to the team in May marked a significant step toward realizing our community engagement goals.

Sebastián brought direct experience working with youth during last summer’s Design Your Future Fellowship, in which he served as a mentor for the team La Familia. He’s also spent time working in education, community and cultural organizing, the creative arts, and Spanish interpreting.

Biluge Ntabala
Community Engagement Fellow

“It is important to engage with more youth and families because their expertise and experiences should be the base of what informs our work,” he says of his new role. “Their input and suggestions are vital for us to better support youth and families.”

For Biluge, her background in community health advocacy work and education in political science and international affairs were a natural fit for the Milwaukee Succeeds team, where she’s begun working to cultivate family leadership in the ECE Coalition.

“Youth and family voice is the backbone of the work we do,” says Biluge. “We want to uplift and work with youth and families as much as possible. They are the voice for change.”

Youth and Family Voice

True change means influencing the policies, practices and procedures that stand in the way of providing a quality educational experience for all of Milwaukee’s students. That type of systems transformation requires a robust network of community members who are willing to stand up and advocate for the cause.

Milwaukee Succeeds and its community engagement team are already hard at work growing these networks – with ambitious plans for the coming months and years.

On the ECE side, Biluge is exploring best practices for engaging parents in the advocacy work, ultimately hoping to bring families into the established ECE Coalition. She’s already begun building relationships and plans to expand her reach by getting out into the community to learn and connect with even more families who are interested in the work.

Her strategy for engaging more parents is simple: “Hear them out and answer them with action,” she says.

For youth, the current engagement strategy revolves heavily around this year’s Youth Forward MKE Ambassadors. These local youth have embarked on a summer training series in which they’re exploring data analysis, honing their facilitation skills and more.

According to Sebastián, “the purpose of these sessions is to provide youth exposure to mental health resources, skill building opportunities, and trainings in an effort to better equip and prepare them.”

The Ambassadors will utilize these skills at the Mentor Greater Milwaukee Youth Summit on August 2, at which they’ll be facilitating a session, as well as at the upcoming Milwaukee Succeeds Leadership Table meeting, where they’ll share a youth perspective on data. The trainings and experiences will also grant them a closer look at what matters to youth in Milwaukee – and how they can use their voices to bring about change.

‘An Exciting Time’

With this new investment in community engagement, Milwaukee Succeeds is declaring its commitment to putting youth and families at the center of the work and continuing to uplift their voices.

“It’s an exciting time for Milwaukee Succeeds,” says Catina. “Sebastián and Biluge are outstanding additions to our team and are already proving to be trusted partners to our stakeholders.”

“My first month with Milwaukee Succeeds has been a very positive experience,” says Sebastián, who calls the work “engaging and innovative.”

Biluge agrees. “It’s been beautiful because I’m working with people who are also passionate about their work.”