CITY OF LOS ANGELES:
DEPT OF NEIGHBORHOOD EMPOWERMENT

Ann-Marie has worked for the City of Los Angeles Department of Neighborhood Empowerment since 2015, and currently serves as the Director of Communications there. The Department is the primary support agency for LA’s Neighborhood Council system, the community-based arm of the LA City government.

Community engagement, PR, education and design projects for the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment shown here include:

Neighborhood Council Art Exhibit, Los Angeles City Hall

Ann-Marie gathered all the images and anecdotes for this exhibit and wrote all the copy for this exhibit at LA City Hall celebrating the accomplishments of Neighborhood Councils on issues ranging from sustainability to land use to emergency preparedness. See the photos and stories from this exhibit here (panels designed by Arin Abedian).

Neighborhood Guide trifold brochure

Neighborhood Council participation is open to all who live, work, study, worship, own property or a business, or belong to locally based community service organizations. Since this is a uniquely broad concept of stakeholdership, many of those served by a Neighborhood Council are unaware that they qualify as a stakeholder, so they need to be informed that this resource is available to them, via outreach tools like the Neighborhood Council trifold brochure in English and Spanish shown here. The brochure was one of many created showing customized info about a Neighborhood Council on one side and a list of popular city services on the other.

Candidate Info Sessions: How to Run for Local Office

LA Neighborhood Council members are public officials, but serve their terms of office as volunteers. For most of LA’s 1800 Neighborhood Council members, this is their first time holding elected office, so training on how to create a successful campaign is key. Over 1,100 people signed up for a recent eight-session series. Watch a virtual Candidate Info Session here: http://tiny.cc/CandidateSession2023.

Board Member Basics manual

When it was created in 1999, LA’s Neighborhood Council system was the first of its kind in the world — a qualitatively new form of government, and a new type of participatory democracy. Because of this, it’s important that best practices are identified and made part of the institutional knowledge that is passed on to the next generation of leaders, through tools like this Board Member Basics manual to help with onboarding of newly elected Neighborhood Council members.