Lao Assistance Center in New Orleans

This week, Lao Assistance Center staff will participate in the National Gender Equity Campaign's organizational convening in New Orleans to learn about and share practices on “building power,” “collective leadership,” and “cultural change” for social justice movements.

Our time will include a film Screening of “A Village Called Versailles” followed by Q & A with Leo Chiang, film maker. The hope throughout the process is to bring relevant practitioners to share tangible examples of “leadership” and “community-building” in social justice movement work to our network to learn from them.

To that end, we'll also be connecting with New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice at the First United Methodist Church and meeting Colette Tippy, Program Director & Saket Soni, Executive Director of the organization. We'll also meet Mary Queen of Vietnam CDC's Environmental Justice Coordinator, Lauren Butz. We'll also meet the Executive director of VAYLA-NO, Minh Nguyen.

We'll participate in a Peer Learning Session facilitated in Small Groups by: CPA, KGA, SOY, featuring the following NOLA leaders:
· Norris Henderson, Director, Voice of the Ex-Offender (VOTE);
· Allen James and Yvette Thierry, Safe Streets, Strong Communities;
· Lauren Butz, Environmental Justice Coordinator, Mary Queen of Vietnam CDC.

We look forward to sharing the full results with you upon our return!