Policy & Advocacy

We believe community members should be at the helm of public decision-making, particularly regarding issues that are central to their lives.

To ensure equitable access to democratic processes and catalyze change from the ground up, we train individuals as grassroots leaders and build high-impact coalitions that work toward building a just and thriving Miami. Our inclusive policy and advocacy work also enables us to conduct deep community engagement, as well as develop community-led programs that increase civic participation and resilience. Through this collective approach, we can build the people power that’s needed to achieve constituency-informed policy and system reforms.

Scroll down for more about our work and a list of our programs. 

Our community advocacy and organizing initiatives are creating transformative change.

Listening to our communities through organizing and direct service

Connecting residents to opportunities for advocacy and civic engagement

Achieving policy wins in coalition with our communities and partners

Boosting community participation in town halls, associations, committees

Training individuals to become grassroots leaders in their communities and beyond

Building, growing and catalyzing networks for collective action

Issues We Care About

Policy change is needed to ensure everyone's needs are met; distribute resources equitably; amend or enforce existing laws; and respond to new threats. For Catalyst Miami, the policy issues that take priority are those that are critical to the well-being of Miami-Dade’s low-wealth communities, as well as issues that the community emphasizes are important.

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Participatory Budgeting

The Covid-19 pandemic unveiled the widespread suffering many in Miami-Dade County continue to face daily due to a lack of stable housing, adequately-paid jobs, and affordable healthcare. On top of this, 2020 put a nationwide spotlight on police brutality, particularly after the brutal murder of George Floyd. Motivated by these realities, hundreds of Miami-Dade County residents bravely shared their vision for less criminalization and more housing, social services, environmental protections, and critical community programs at the 2020-21 Miami-Dade County budget hearings.

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Neighborhood-based Resilience

Catalyst Miami’s neighborhood-based resilience initiative focuses on the following communities: Homestead/South Dade, Overtown, and North Miami. The goal of this initiative is to facilitate grassroots-led, neighborhood-level community organizing, so that residents can unite around transformative change that allows their community to better prepare for and recover from all of life’s storms.

Our actions include hosting community visioning workshops to assess neighborhood priorities and inform programming; distributing disaster preparedness kits; and creating teams of residents, called Community Champions, who meet regularly to implement projects with our support.

In collaboration with the Community Champions and other local advocates, we take a lead role in the policy and advocacy efforts shaping these individual neighborhoods. We participate in meetings to promote better coordination with government officials and agencies around our community priorities.

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Network Development and Support

Catalyst Miami supports new and existing networks with the goal of building capacity across sectors, issues, and communities. Examples include the Miami Climate Alliance, the Clean Energy For All coalition, the Consumer State Advocacy Project, the Miami Birth Justice Initiative, and more. By linking the grassroots leaders from our trainings and programs to groups like these, we foster sustained, effective activism. This also provides them with opportunities to be aware of what is going on nationally, statewide, and locally so they can get involved through their community projects and direct advocacy work. Network-backed action plays a critical role in policy wins on the issues we care about.

The Miami Climate Alliance is made up of 100+ organizations, as well as local residents and nationwide experts. It is dedicated to building urgency, power, and cohesion around climate change and sea level rise by achieving significant policy wins and working to establish a model for just, equitable, and resilient communities.

The Consumer State Advocacy Project, which seeks to expand Medicaid in Florida, includes partners and community members from across the state, such as the Florida Policy Institute, Florida Voices for Health, the Florida Health Justice Project, and Central Florida Jobs with Justice. Broadly speaking, the project uses national healthcare policy and its impact on local communities as a benchmark and guide to increasing access to care.

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Leadership Training

Through our leadership development work, Catalyst Miami has helped hundreds of adults and youth find their voices through public policy training and practice. We’ve also created leadership pipelines, connecting community members with opportunities to speak out, whether at commission meetings or by serving on municipal boards.

We are committed to tailoring our civic leadership programming to community-identified priorities. Our goal is to inspire resident-informed, resident-led resilience strategies that include a grassroots, community-driven policy agenda.

LIGHT

Leaders in Grassroots Health Transformation

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CLEAR

Community Leadership on the Environment, Advocacy, and Resilience

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HEAL

Housing Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership

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Disability Rights & The Enable Project

The Enable Project is a Catalyst-led coalition that trains nonprofits about the inclusion of people with disabilities in their organizations and movements. The goals of this collaborative project are three-fold:

1. to assist persons with disabilities in securing public benefits to which they are entitled;

2. to increase civic engagement among people with disabilities so that their voice is heard in policy decisions that impact their lives; and

3. to increase the representation of people with disabilities in social justice movements. 

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Catalyst to the Capital

Every year, we organize a three-day trip to Tallahassee, during which a delegation of community members, partners, and staff members meet with elected officials to discuss the issues of greatest concern to the communities we work with. Participants of Catalyst to the Capital (C2C) receive training, meet with legislators, and advocate for their communities.

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