Civic

Engagement

Here At Make The Road Nevada, One Of Top Priorities Is Engaging With Our Community. Whether It's By Reaching Out To Voters Across Nevada Or Helping Our Youth Engage With Their Community, We Always Make Sure To Lead With Dignidad, Poder, And With Our Comunidad In Mind.

Community Leadership Academy

In 2021, Make the Road Nevada hosted the Community Leadership Academy, where we contracted experts from the community to develop a bilingual (Spanish and English) curriculum focused on three of the most important elements of campaign management: field, communications, and data. We know our people are capable of running successful campaigns, so we wanted to give them the best tools and opportunities to do so through this program.

We recruited 10 participants for each cohort from our membership and the broader Latinx and BIPOC communities. These participants spent four weekends becoming versed in field, communications, or data. We ensured our academy participants left with a solid understanding of key issues that impacted our MRNV members, which included environmental justice, economic/worker justice, corporate accountability, housing justice, health justice, and immigrant justice. 

We also partnered with the New American Leaders to develop both candidates and campaign staff from our community, for our community.

We sought five leaders in key legislative districts and five leaders in key judicial districts to run for local office in 2022. This group enrolled in the New American Leaders candidate training program where they were educated and prepared for what a local election looks like from a candidates perspective.

COVID-19

When the global pandemic arrived in all of our lives, Make the Road Nevada took immediate action in helping and educating our community. From updating our members on masks mandates and social distancing requirements to helping distribute vaccines, we always—and continue to—worked hard to keep our community in-the-know and healthy. Below are some of the efforts we’ve taken to help our people combat COVID-19:

  • We helped schedule 57 vaccine appointments.
  • We partnered Immunize Nevada to host vaccination clinics tailored to the needs of the immigrant community in our office—which located in 89110, the most impacted zip code in Nevada.
  • Our communications team wrote blog posts with COVID-19 and Nevada updates, including school and reopening updates.

For more information on our efforts, please visit here.

2020 Primary Elections

Make the Road Nevada contacted over 92,000 people by telephone and helped over 1,200 people create detailed and safe voting plans. During this time, members completed over 80 hours of volunteer outreach, as well. Way to go, familia!

2020 General Election

Members and staff heavily collaborated this season to ensure voter turnout—and here are some of our highlights!

  • Members completed 78 shifts and spent over 250 hours calling and texting voters.
  • Members worked alongside staff to lead bilingual phone and texting banks—where they trained and motivated new member volunteers to join.
  • Make the Road was one of the only Nevada organization to commit to door-to-door canvassing. We worked tirelessly to ensure our canvas program ran safely for both our staff and community.
  • We made 59,754 calls, sent 84,844 text messages, safely knocked on 2,173 doors, and assisted 8,141 voters in creating voting plans.
  • We reached 33,192 voters through digital ads.

2020 Census

Make the Road Nevada took part in helping with the 2020 census. The United States Census is a mandated count of every United States resident, which takes place every 10 years. Here are some of our census highlights!

  • We mobilized and educated our members to participate in the census.
  • We directly assisted hundreds of families in filling out their census by holding honest conversations to debunk major fears held in the Latinx, immigrant community.
  • We launched Censo y Cena where we partnered with a local small business to provide dinner to families while they virtually joined us to fill out the census.
  • We partnered with local radio station La Campesina to put out a public service announcement about the census in Spanish.
  • We worked with Univision to release an informational video about the census.
  • We published a bilingual how-to video on how to fill out the census and what questions to expect.

Housing Justice

More than ever, housing has become a vulnerable matter for our community. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many were left unemployed—and not knowing their tenant and housing rights. We at Make the Road ensured our Latinx community stayed informed. View some of our housing justice efforts below:

  • In January 2020, Make the Road Nevada and the Las Vegas community held an action outside of Mayor Caroline Goodman’s State of the City to oppose her criminalization of homeless people. We held protests at the City Council meeting and outside city hall, as well.
  • We hosted weekly Housing Justice webinars with legal representatives to answer our community’s questions.
  • We reminded our community members of their tenant rights with weekly meetings.

For more information on our housing justice efforts, please visit here. 

Climate Equity and Clean Energy

Make the Road Nevada has engaged our membership on clean energy and climate equity work because the environment is inherently tied to health issues our members face, including asthma, obesity, heatstroke, and dehydration. 

As heat islands continue to grow and our air quality continues to decline, the need for action has become more dire. We have redoubled our work around environmental equity. Below is a list of our  efforts toward a healthier community and planet:

  • We serve on the board of the Advisory Board to guide and inform people on the work the Guinn Center for Public Policy Priorities in Nevada (in partnership with the Morrison Institute for Public Policy at Arizona State University) will be leading. This includes disaster management and vulnerability to weather.
  • We are members of the Southern Nevada Blue Ribbon Panel on Social Equity, which also includes climate impacts and the Nevada Hispanic Legislative Caucus’ subcommittee on environmental issues.
  • We lead the Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition (NEJC), the only environmental justice organization in our state-led and steered by membership-based organizations of color. 

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