Annual Report 2020-2021

To strengthen the capacity of local governments, two important training and
education initiatives will be launched: the Municipal Participation and Innovation Lab (El
Lab) and the Municipal Development and Collaboration Unit (la unidá'). In its pursuit of
improved quality of life in Puerto Rico, through El Lab, La Liga will facilitate
participatory design processes to support innovation and adaptation that centers the
role of the municipality in coordinating collective solutions, with ample participation of
stakeholders. By enabling this collaboration, La Liga expects that Puerto Rican towns in
need of infrastructure, services, and ongoing recovery will become better positioned to
leverage the access to federal funds that municipal governments have together with the
access to citizen experts and citizens’ trust that community-based organizations have.
And La Liga will be there to provide support when those collaborations materialize,
through La Unida’ it will accompany these public-private partnerships on the journey of
identifying and applying for public funding to address public problems.
These learning communities will cover topics anchored in the thematic axes of La
Liga, seeking to bring together municipal teams in workshops and seminars, with
particular emphasis on addressing the growing needs of our municipal governments, as
well as serving as a bridge between them and the organizations that make up the
municipal ecosystems.
The Casey Family Programs focus on bringing about lasting improvements in the wellbeing
of children, families, and the communities in which they live. As part of their
initiatives, they launched a project focused on analyzing public policies that directly
affect Latinx families, preventing or hindering their access to programs that benefit
their well-being. To include the Puerto Rican community, the Casey Foundation
recruited La Liga to conduct the study in Puerto Rico.
29
The project includes a comprehensive review of existing laws, regulations, and
policies that impact the well-being and prosperity of Latinx families and children; a
social network analysis; and an analysis of the environment and context to create a
visual representation focused on the intersectionality of social dynamics and power
structures in the production of public policy. In addition, the study design includes a
series of in-depth interviews with participants in different sectors, including people with
lived experience, as well as stakeholders in the government, non-profit, philanthropic,
research, and private sectors.