Speakers: Sandhya Laddha, Raayan Mohtashemi, Ari Feinsmith, Omar Din

Imagine a community where the voices of all people are central to planning decisions; where the air is clean to breathe and folks of all backgrounds and income levels play, walk, and bike together; where safety is derived from relationships built upon equitable land use. Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition believes in this picture of community and understands that a bottom-up approach to advocacy and participation of the local community are keystones in creating it. In an effort to center community voices and cover the 35 cities and towns across San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, SVBC works in a local team model. In this model, the organization recruits and trains a pool of active and engaged residents who meet regularly to advocate for making their city streets better for people walking and biking. The aim is to build community capacity and empower and strengthen local advocates who can take-up advocacy efforts in their cities. At the same time, we aim to bridge the gap between the existing community needs and government planning processes that often happen in parallel. The speakers of this panel are key players of this local team model which include – SVBC staff, a local team leader, a city staff person and an elected official. Each of these stakeholders will talk about their perspective about this model and how it has been helpful for them over the past years.