Last year, Valley Leadership continued to grow and expand its impact and reach. We finished the third year of our Catalyze and Explore programs, graduating another 100+ leaders and sending them out into the community equipped and ready to make meaningful impact – as individuals serving the community, but also as part of our Impact Maker. There were some big milestones for our Impact Teams that continue to bring together alumni and strategic partners to address Arizona’s most pressing issues. Keep reading for more exciting updates!

Catalyze

A total of 88 Catalyze Class 3 graduates committed 6 months learning about Arizona’s most pressing issues and how their personal knowledge, skills and passion can impact those issues. Participants learned from over 26 community partners, including presentations from David Hondula, Director of Phoenix’s Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, ASU’s president Michael Crow, and Mayors Giles and Woods of Mesa and Tempe.

Catalyze Class 3 brought together folks leading from all different positions in organizations from the private, nonprofit and public sectors. Through in-person socials, leaders were able to connect with and learn from each other, and learn more about our Impact Maker work. All Class 3 graduates made a “Commitment To Do” for Arizona, with many choosing to join an Impact Maker team.

Explore

Our third Explore class just wrapped up last month, with 11 graduates who visited 6 cities across our state. The cohort traveled 1,754 miles together during the trips, and heard from 85 community partners.We encourage you to read the blog posts written by Jen Gastelum, Explore Program Manager, to learn more about the program and the cities and towns that were visited. You can see them here: Final Reflection & Graduation, Navajo Nation, Buckeye, Mesa, South Phoenix, Nogales and Yuma.

Impact Maker

Last year was very “Driven to Do” for our Impact Teams as they made big gains across the board. We were also very excited to welcome 32 new team members over the last year, including 22 from Catalyze Class 3’s graduating class.

Our Child Well-Being Team was busy this past year expanding on the Chatbot project the team had co-developed with Together for Arizona and other community partners. The Chatbot, now named Mia, is live on 20+ websites (and growing) and helps connect Arizona families with food, clothing, heat relief and cell phone assistance.

Our Education Team continued its support of Arizona’s FAFSA Coalition with the Cox Media campaign partnership. With the delay in the FAFSA being released this past year, Arizona’s FAFSA completion rate was down and lagged other states, which made this campaign all that much more important. The campaign resulted in 7,200,000+ impressions and 47,000+ visitors to azfafsa.org to get FAFSA support. Our Early Literacy Team has focused on ensuring the science of reading is an emphasis for elementary district school boards in the Phoenix region. The team has spoken at two school boards to advocate for prioritizing early literacy and is working on partnerships that can help encourage more teachers to receive training in the science of reading.

Our Environmental Team is working to help neighborhoods improve their Tree Equity Scores through smart investments in the areas that are most in need of trees. Through partnerships with the City of Phoenix and American Forests, the team developed the Tree Equity Score Toolkit, which provides resources to business owners interested in planting trees on their property. The Team is reaching out to targeted businesses in low tree equity score neighborhoods to provide support around tree plantings.

Our Health Team was incredibly busy addressing Opioid Stigma Reduction as well as working on Housing & Healthy Neighborhoods. Our Opioids team continued to expand on the Toolkit for Arizona Businesses. The team also hosted the first Opioid & The Workplace Summit with 9 opioid experts for 70 local leaders. Our Housing & Healthy Neighborhoods Team has been working in five cities around the Phoenix region as well as at the state legislature to support policies aimed at increasing the supply of housing. The Team provided comments on three city general plans and nine bills at the state legislature.

Our Jobs & Economy Team continued to promote the Fair Chance Employer Badge and launched the badge on Pipeline AZ’s platform. All Pipeline companies can now apply for and display the Fair Chance Badge on their profile to improve recruitment of individuals with justice experience. Currently there are 22 companies that have applied for and received the Fair Chance Employer Badge.

Our Racial Justice Team researched the ecosystem around equity in Arizona and how the team could play a role in addressing this issue. The Team utilized the US Racial Inequality in Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals Index to identify areas of need in Arizona and decided to focus work on improving Arizona’s ranking in Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions. In particular, the team is looking to decrease the number of people incarcerated in Arizona, particularly Black Arizonans and youth.