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With 116 advocacy leaders of 80 organizations from 36 states and provinces across North America, the 2012 Leadership Retreat was the largest and most successful Alliance gathering to date. The group gathered for 3 days in early September in Long Beach, CA to regroup, recharge and learn from the successes of their peers. The Retreat featured 30 workshop sessions divided into various tracks, including communications, fundraising, board development, broadening our movement and more. Along with these workshops, advocates also had plenty of time to connect with each other during unstructured periods of the Retreat.

One of the themes throughout the Leadership Retreat was engaging new communities and groups around biking and walking. One workshop that addressed this critical topic was centered around Open Streets—and how organizations can use Open Streets initiatives to work with new partners. Participants identified potential partners and what roles they might play during Open Streets. For example, organizers might engage a dance studio to provide free classes along the route, while local businesses may serve as supporters and advocate for Open Streets with local politicians.  You can view the full list of potential partners that was developed in the Resources Library (and we also did a similar workshop at a conference this past May). You can view the outputs from that meeting here.

We know that not everyone could attend the Leadership Retreat, and even those of you who did attend weren’t able to attend all of the workshop sessions that you were interested in. Fortunately, we were able to capture the discussions at many of the sessions, and we are excited to share these notes with Alliance member organizations. You can view all the notes that were collected in our Resources Library.