The Community Learning Partnership is gradually growing as it launches new projects. Its Executive Director and Assistant Director are based in Washington, and the Director of the Connecticut Pipeline Initiative will be based in Hartford. Each CLP project involves several additional people and institutional partners, including people in several countries collaborating on the International Working Group for University Education for Community Change.
Andrew Mott - Executive Director
Andrew currently is Director of the Community Learning Partnership and a Senior Fellow at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, working with the Research Center on Leadership in Action. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, and a member of the Michigan Bar.
In 1967, Mr. Mott began 35 years of service with the Center for Community Change and its predecessor the Citizens' Crusade Against Poverty. He served as the Center's Director of Field Operations for twenty years. In that capacity, he was responsible for directing the Center's field staff as it provided technical assistance to several hundred grassroots low-income and minority community organizations and community development corporations throughout the U.S. In addition, Mr. Mott provided on-site advice and assistance to grassroots groups with regard to organizational development, housing, community reinvestment, and community development.
As the Center's Deputy Executive Director for several years, Mr. Mott had primary responsibility for planning and program development for CCC. He was responsible for launching new initiatives on jobs, economic development, and leadership development, and overseeing a number of CCC special projects, studies, training initiatives, and pilot programs. Over the years Mr. Mott has launched and directed several special prjoects, created and led national coalitions, conducted studies and helped lead joint efforts to develop new public policies regarding poverty and community development.
Mr. Mott became Executive Director of the Center in 1998. During his five years as Executive Director, he expanded the organization and deepened its emphasis on community organizing and public policy work. New capacities for participatory action research, media and communications, and national issue campaigns were added to the Center during his directorship.
After leaving the Center in 2002, Mr. Mott created the Community Learning Partnership, through which he works with others to expand learning within the field of community organizing and social change. This work includes research and writing as well as a series of action projects designed to strengthen evaluation, organizational learning, writing, teaching and training in this field with the goal of helping young people and mid-career practitioners develop the knowledge, experience, vision, values and skills they need as they work for community and social change.
Mr. Mott has directed, edited, and contributed to numerous studies related to housing and community development, grassroots involvement in monitoring, evaluating and acting on public policy issues, and strategies for building grassroots capacity and increasing poor people's impact on the issues which most concern them. Mr. Mott coauthored Housing and Public Policy, a book published by the American Enterprise Institute. His most recent publications have been Moving to Scale in Improving America's Housing, Evaluation: Good News for Funders and Strengthening Social Change Through Assesssment and Organizational Learning.
Among his board responsibilities, Mr. Mott has served as founding Chairman of the Coalition on Human Needs, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Working Group for Community Development Reform, and the Coalition for Low Income Community Development. He has also served on the boards of the Presbyterian Economic Development Corporation, Community Catalyst, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the National Neighborhood Coalition, Ayuda and ActionAid USA.
Prior to his work with CCC, Mr. Mott served two years in the Peace Corps as a university instructor in the Department of National Development at Pahlavi University in Shiraz, Iran. This program combined undergraduate and masters' level work, and included experiential learning in the villages as well as an interdisciplinary curriculum. His teaching in Iran followed his service as a management intern in the Community Action Program of the Office of Economic Opportunity, where he assisted with early planning for the "war on poverty's" health and legal services programs. During his law studies, he worked in electoral politics and as a fellow of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, Switzerland, where he helped prepare working papers for the Bangkok conference on civil liberties and constitutional government in Asia.
