National Convening Program Books 2016 YEO National Convening Program Book

Detailed Agenda 12:15 PM – 1:15 PM Inside-Outside Strategy Lunch Plenary: Partnerships with the Grassroots Great Room 1 Legislation is just one component of an advocacy agenda. Impactful social change often requires organizing efforts from the grassroots and collaboration from within political institutions—which in turn may transform the very nature of those political institutions. Our panel examines the strategies, the strengths, and the challenges of creating partnerships both inside and outside political structures to advance the kind of change our communities need. AUSTIN BELALI Democracy Alliance Austin Belali is the director of the Youth Engagement Fund (YEF) at the Democracy Alliance. Through leveraged grant making, YEF works to engage young people in civic life, build their long-term power, and help secure a permanent progressive majority. Belali comes to YEF and the DA from SEIU, where he served as the union’s Millennial Program Coordinator. He led the launch and development of this program, which developed local infrastructure across the United States and Canada for youth and emerging member leaders to take action in elections and on progressive issue campaigns. Prior to his work with the Millennial Program, he worked as a lead organizer for SEIU in Wisconsin and taught comparative democracy and civics to high school students in Senegal and India. In addition to his work at the DA, Belali is a community organizer and volunteer locally supporting economic development efforts in low-income and immigrant communities in Maryland and Virginia, where he now lives. SOFIA CAMPOS The Wildfire Project Sofia Campos was born in Peru and raised in Highland Park in Los Angeles. At 17 years old, she learned that she and her family were undocumented. Shortly after, in 2008, she began organizing with IDEAS at UCLA, one of the first undocumented student support groups in the country. In 2012, undocumented youth won Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) which allowed work permits and safety from deportation to over a half million migrant youth in the US. From 2011 to 2014 Sofia was board chair of United We Dream. In 2013, she helped start the Freedom Side collective

National Convening Program Books 2016 YEO National Convening Program Book | Page 24