EmpowerLA, a service of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, is accompanied by a new logo and a tagline that captures the power and the ripple effect that one individual can have: “Empower yourself. Empower your community. EmpowerLA.” The intent of the renaming effort is to generate more awareness of the initiative, engage more community members, publicize local achievements, and set the stage for citywide elections this spring.

“For ten years, our mission has been to give everyone a respected voice in the important decisions that affect their local neighborhoods,” says BongHwan (BH) Kim, General Manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. “With the fiscal budget crisis at hand, it is more important than ever that stakeholders voice their concerns about the issues that they care about most in their communities – crime, roads and streets, gangs, and the economy and the name change to EmpowerLA reflects the fact that the City of Los Angeles has one of the most innovative platforms for citizen engagement and improving government responsiveness to local concerns.”

Launch of the new name, EmpowerLA, will be accompanied by collecting, sharing, and celebrating the success stories and achievements of individual Neighborhood Councils and recognizing local government for exhibiting exemplary responsiveness to communities. The EmpowerLA concept enables the Department and the individual Councils to tell the unique stories of each neighborhood and communicate the common vision that no one knows a neighborhood better than the people who live, work, and play there.

From disaster/emergency response in Chatsworth, to the provision of health care services for the uninsured in Pico-Union, to providing wireless access for the Mar Vista community, to community mobilizations for increased public safety in South Los Angeles, to the development of a greening strategy for Downtown, EmpowerLA demonstrates the power of individual participation in community-based government.

“The new name is more user-friendly,” adds Kim, and it captures the spirit of what this movement is all about. It celebrates individual voices, diversity, and participation. It serves as an endorsement for the work of every Neighborhood Council.”

The EmpowerLA name also captures the spirit of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment's commitment to building the Neighborhood Council System through funding, training, and administrative support and increasing the responsiveness of City government to communities.

Later this year, the Department will provide enhanced communication capabilities through a revamped website to better facilitate training and workshop programs for free to community stakeholders who want to learn more about city government, build their leadership and management skills, run for a Neighborhood Council, or be better informed about each others best practices and also the issues they face in their communities. “Building leadership builds communities,” says Al Abrams, Vice President of the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners. The Board of Neighborhood Commissioners provides oversight and sets policies for the local Councils.

In addition to renaming the initiative, the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (the Commission) will no longer abbreviate its name to BONC, and the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (The Department) will cease using the acronym DONE in all communications. “Its easy to use verbal shorthand among those of us who know about the Department,” says Kim, “…but sometimes we all lose sight of the fact that it isn't useful for outsiders. DONE makes a word, but it isn't a word that captures the spirit of what we have accomplished or how much more progress we have ahead of us. Our work is anything but done.”

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DONE website:
www.lacityneighborhoods.com

See also:
LACP's BONC / DONE pages

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