Community Asset Development Redefining Education (Cadre)

CADRE is an independent, grassroots, parent membership organization in South Los Angeles, made up of and led by African American and Latino parents/caregivers whose children attend local schools in Los Angeles. Our mission is to solidify and advance parent leadership to ensure that all children are rightfully educated regardless of where they live. After two years of meeting in living rooms, CADRE co-founders Rosalinda Hill and Maisie Chin opened an office and began organizing a local parent base in August 2001, by canvassing in several South Los Angeles neighborhoods. Over 10 years, we have sustained an emerging base of several hundred members. CADRE trains and supports grassroots, low-income parents of color to be leaders and advocates for their children’s education, focusing on parents who are normally left behind by other organizations due to socioeconomic barriers. Demographically, our parent members are: 50% African American and 50% Latino; working poor or unemployed, low income; multi-generational; monolingual English and Spanish; recent and long-time immigrants from Latin America; migrants from the South; and achievers of some level of secondary education.