'I felt as if blinders were removed from my community eyes'
Monday, February 13, 2006
(The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation)Sal Savini, sports and programming director for
the Greater
Las Vegas Inner-City Games, is a public
innovator who is using The Harwood Institute's
knowledge every day in the important work he is
doing to improve the lives of Las Vegas
youth.
Sal is also an alum of the Harwood Public Innovators Lab
(then called the Harwood Public Leadership
School). Here are some of his thoughts on the
experience:
Trying to define how important the Harwood Public Leadership School was to me as a leader in my organization proved to be a challenge. I say this because I was affected on many levels by what I call the “Harwood experience.” But I will do my best not to digress too much and be precise in describing how valuable I feel attending the school was – and why I think it is so important that you as a civic leader seriously consider participating.
I am currently the sports and programming director for the Greater Las Vegas After-School All-Stars/Inner-City Games. Since it’s inception in 1995, our organization has positively impacted the lives of more than 100,000 Las Vegas youths.
Our mission is to provide opportunities for inner-city youth to participate in after-school and summer activities in sports, educational, cultural, and community-enrichment programs; to build confidence and self-esteem; to encourage youths to say “no” to gangs, drugs, and violence, and “yes” to hope, learning, and life. As a person who works with the community on a daily basis, I found the Harwood Public Leadership School to be an invaluable experience.
Meeting other public leaders from different parts of the country who had the same basic goals was very critical for me. When I found that the “roadblocks” and “bumps in the road” that I experienced in reaching out to the community were not so unique to Las Vegas, but in fact were very common to other communities, I was somewhat relieved – and re-energized.
The Harwood Public Leadership School provided me with the first real roadmap to developing my organization into what The Harwood Institute calls a “Center of Strength” – a civic-minded organization that holds a special kind of credibility within a community. The school also gave us an opportunity to think about how we as public leaders could help our organizations consider new strategies for engaging the citizens we serve.
Personally, I felt as if blinders were removed from my “community eyes” and that I had to rethink my entire approach to improving community life in Las Vegas. Even more, I had to re-examine myself in my day-to-day life as a member of my community and understand that as an individual, I could become a “Center of Strength” as well.
I can honestly say that I am not the lone attendee who felt so strongly about the value of the Harwood Public Leadership School. I truly believe that there is no public or private organization that deals with community life that could not benefit from what Rich Harwood and others from his organization shared with us and challenged us to consider.