LEAD Networks

LEAD serves as a primary site for innovative and productive projects in Latino Education. Our impact and success are grounded on collaboration, participation, and outreach. Our work, by necessity, involves significant participation and partnerships in the region and nationally, and strong interactive connections with Latino networks in the U.S., as well as Latin Americans and Indigenous Peoples throughout the Americas and the world.

The LEAD movement has primarily resided in higher education institutions, which are criticized -often for good reason- for our tendency to isolate ourselves from our surrounding contexts and for not being more engaged with the issues that affect the communities in which we are located.

The various LEAD networks reach agreement that there are important issues that directly or indirectly affect institutions and the multiple communities we straddle, that required us, to "climb out of the ivory tower," to do the action work that is most relevant for the local context, and in such a way that they can be used to inform and shape policy.

Put simply, the LEAD movement engages- and believes that the singular accomplishable solution to our educational dilemma lies in community activism and democratic participation.

"Netroots" is one way to describe our methods of awareness-raising, education, promotion, advocacy, activism, analysis, discussion, critique, and dissemination of educational issues that impact Latinos.

The word is a combination of "internet and grassroots," reflecting the technological innovations, participatory democracy, and campaign-oriented activities that set our techniques apart from other forms of education and advocacy. Our work propels through local and regional efforts, with supra-local interlinks via national, and global web-based connectiveness -- that organizes communication points that spread out, but are not directed outward to, or from, any one singular point.