The Institute for Leadership Education, Advancement and Development (“I-LEAD”) is a community-based nonprofit school that works to improve local quality of life by helping to strengthen citizens as effective community leaders. Focusing on Pennsylvania's most challenged communities with respect to health status, safety, and economic success, I-LEAD's mission is to improve quality of life in Pennsylvania by developing leaders and building effective organizations and community collaborations.

Description:
Over the past twelve years, at the core of its work, I-LEAD has developed, enhanced, and rigorously implemented a comprehensive leadership development program. The program is now offered as a communiity-based fully accredited two year Associate's Degree via I-LEAD's College without Walls. I-LEAD also has significant experience in operating statewide and regional training and technical assistance initiatives.

HISTORY OF COLLEGE WITHOUT WALLS
I. Alongside neighborhood leaders, the founder and CEO of I-LEAD, a former Philadelphia
Assistant District Attorney, worked in some of the city’s most distressed neighborhoods to resolve community problems. This productive collaboration led to a recognition that the key to changing a community’s prospects lay in cultivating the leadership skills and leadership capacities from within that particular place.

II. I-LEAD was formed in 1995 to promote these grassroots community leadership efforts by delivering leadership training and technical assistance in 16 cities across the Commonwealth in partnership with the Pennsylvania Weed and Seed program.

III. In 2005, I-LEAD translated its leadership training into an accredited two year college program, College without Walls. The majority of I-LEAD trainees had never pursued post-secondary education and sought college credit for their leadership coursework. Graduates now gain not only leadership skills to apply in their communities, but a valued credential in the workplace. College without Walls was piloted at the Chester Education Foundation in Chester, PA which sits 20 miles south of Philadelphia and is the most impoverished city in the state. I-LEAD also offers college cohorts in Philadelphia, Upper Darby, Coatesville, and Reading, PA.

The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created -- created first in the mind and will; created next in activity . . . The paths to it are not found, but made; and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.

John Schaar

Contact people:

Angel Figueroa, Vice President, (phone), (email) Josie Torres-Boykins, Assistant, (phone), (email) Cynda Clyde, Communications Director, (phone), (email)

Address:

525 Penn Street Reading , PA 19602 (See a map)

Miscellaneous Information

Here are our special events...
	0
Number of clients/community members we serve in a year...
	300
Number of volunteers utilized in a year...
	0