INDIANAPOLIS — Central Indiana Community Foundation (CICF) announced its 5-year strategic plan on Thursday, April 11. The plan will execute its mission to mobilize people, ideas and investments to make this a community where all individuals have equitable opportunity to reach their full potential — no matter place, race or identity. The foundation called for a more Inclusive City by helping to create environments and neighborhoods that empower people, changing systems that unfairly hold people back, and dismantling systemic racism.
CICF announced a focus around five community leadership areas that overlap and influence one another:
• Family Stabilization: Everyone should have equitable opportunities to obtain housing, transportation and health services.
• Neighborhood Empowerment and Placemaking: Communities are most successful and thriving when investments are resident-driven and when neighborhoods have access to culturally relevant art, nature and beauty every day.
• Economic Mobility: All people can rise out of poverty by acquiring skills that lead to living wage jobs, and if they are not held back by inequitable policies.
• Criminal Justice Reform: Residents have a right to live in safe communities, and we need to commit to better outcomes for people interacting with the criminal justice system.
• Dismantling Systemic Racism: As a foundation, CICF is committed to becoming a fully inclusive, anti-racist and multicultural organization.
At the event, Inclusive City, Payne and CICF board members promised to continue learning, adapting and partnering with others in this work, emphasizing that CICF cannot do any of this alone. Payne then delivered on this promise by announcing a new Opportunity Equity and Inclusion Advisory Council made up of 20 diverse community members to serve as accountability and relationship building partners to the foundation.