Overview

The public policy/leadership development fellowship is the flagship program in our organization. The LN fellowship is a 2-year public policy leadership development program designed for emerging and established adult leaders, committed to building stronger communities through activism and civic engagement.

What is Public Policy?

Public policy is the means by which a government maintains order or addresses the needs of its citizens through actions defined by its constitution. The policy, a set of guiding principles provides the way government manages the matters of any given community.

Why a Public Policy focus?

Because we aim to build a stronger community.

The Fellowship peels to the core through a process where our competitively selected group of participates work together to identify the problem(s) and/or root causes of a problem impacting the greater Newark community negatively. Our participants then challenge the status quo, identify & formulate solutions and suggested new approaches. This leads to new policy formation and implementation as well as evaluation where appropriate.

Additionally, in the case of the LN fellowship numerous individuals compete and collaborate to influence policymakers to act on problems. We encourage our participants to use a variety of tactics and tools moving a positive agenda forward for the greater good, including advocating their positions publicly, attempting to educate supporters and opponents, and mobilizing allies on a particular issue.

What is Leadership Focus? 

Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal. Leadership development and training is a strategy to strengthening the skills of our participants to enable them to better engage and influence policy makers as well as the citizenry on behalf of critical public policies that may need to be changed on behalf of the community.

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Program Design

The program offers an experiential educational opportunity as the Leadership Newark Fellows program participants deliberate, discuss and debate public policy issues. Additionally, the program’s seminars and dinner meetings give the Fellows an opportunity to inform themselves through case studies, simulations, field visits and panel discussions about Newark’s future. Fellows will analyze issues, adopt a position and persuade others.

Curriculum

In the two-year program, Leadership Newark Fellows will:

• Sharpen their leadership skills
• Increase their understanding of important city and regional issues
• Learn to build coalitions to solve problems
• Develop a network of new relationships with other leaders
• Gain connections to the individuals and institutions that can help improve the community’s future