Community Development

Join Leadership for a Changing World on Friday, October 19 for a live interview with Victoria Kovari

Join Leadership for a Changing World on Friday, October 19 at 1 pm EST for a live interview with Victoria Kovari, Chairperson of the Metropolitan Organizing Strategy for Enabling Strength (MOSES) Transportation Task Force in Detroit. You may submit questions now at http://leadershipforchange.org/talks/discuss.php3?ForumID=4. Victoria Kovari has played a leading role in developing a regional strategy that addresses urban blight. She has focused on building an urban-suburban coalition of religious congregations, suburban mayors, Democratic and Republican legislators, environmentalists, unions, and transit users to focus on issues of public transportation. In November of 1999, Victoria Kovari and other MOSES leaders brought together three county executives, 10 suburban mayors, representatives of five major corporations, 12 state legislators and 800 members of MOSES churches in the first-ever regional meeting on public transportation. Together, they began to craft a regional transit vision. MOSES’ regional strategy has produced results. In April 2000, it organized a hearing on the need for more public transit funding. Bishops, rabbis, union members and environmentalists met with state legislators. The hearing led Michigan’s governor to sign an appropriations bill that provided a $50 million increase for public transit, defeating efforts by road builders to cut funds to public transit by 50 percent. On Friday, October 19, Victoria Kovari will answer your questions and discuss:

• Why MOSES has focused on transportation issues
• How MOSES has framed public transportation as a social justice issue
• The challenges of organizing a broad coalition across lines of religion, class, and race

Founded in 1997, MOSES is an ecumenical and interfaith community organization composed of 53 churches, two hospitals, and one university that operate in Detroit and seven suburbs. Across its numerous activities and programs, MOSES helps congregations and citizens gain greater influence in public policy debates. MOSES actively supports increasing funds for public transit, encouraging economic renewal, combating urban sprawl, and promoting affordable housing. Because of the organizing efforts around transportation issues, MOSES and Victoria Kovari are now poised to lead campaigns for significant changes in state policy affecting urban and suburban areas.

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The Ford Foundation is an independent, nonprofit grant-making organization. For more than half a century it has been a resource for innovative people and institutions worldwide, guided by its goals of strengthening democratic values, reducing poverty and injustice, promoting international cooperation and advancing human achievement. With headquarters in New York, the foundation has offices in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Russia.