Today we’d like to introduce you to Cornell Woolridge
Hi Cornell, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was raised by parents who were civically engaged from a very early age, integrating a movie theater with the NAACP while in high school. I volunteered for my first political campaign, it was a school board race, in 3rd grade and caught the politics/civic engagement bug immediately. Service to others was always a big thing in my family and civic engagement became a way to serve that wasn’t exclusively tied to politics. After spending much of my life in politics, civic engagement and non-profit management, I noticed it felt like there was a disconnect between non-profits effectively serving communities and communities needing to be served. I created CivicSolve as a way to connect communities in need with their collective assets and resources provided by non-profit organizations and elected officials. Most recently, I worked with a disability advocacy group out of El Paso and over the last two years, I have seen this group go from rarely speaking in trainings, to working with El Paso’s City Council on a City Proclamation and paid internships with various city departments. Empowering others is the very best thing I do in my work as a civic engagement consultant.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There have been plenty of challenges. Civic engagement is one of those things that everybody knows is important, but way too few truly understand, and even fewer want to pay to do or do better. I started CivicSolve in Maryland and was fortunate enough to have a mentor at a disability advocacy organization that was looking to develop some civic engagement best practices throughout its network of councils nationwide. This was my first break. It has been a hustle since 2013, and some years where I didn’t get any work and some years I’ve thought of shutting it down. My passion for empowering others and building community has kept me doing this work even when it has felt like I’m working alone, pushing up against insurmountable cynicism.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Simply put, I am a civic engagement consultant. Effectively, I facilitate community building. I help communities identify a key issue, determine what assets they have within their communities, and connect them with any additional help/resources might be needed. CivicSolve also connects organizations, who want to work with communities, figure out the best ways to use their resources. In my years working in the non-profit sector, I often saw organizations who worked with the best of intentions, but typically deployed their resources without actually first connecting with the community they’re trying to serve. What makes me different is that some do trainings and others serve as a liaison, but with CivicSolve, an organization is able to get both or either depending on the need. What sets CivicSolve apart is that we work at every level, national, state and municipal and can deliver customized trainings and project management, among other services.
I am most proud of the work I’ve done with a small disability organization in El Paso, called Children’s Disability Information Coalition. The organization wanted to increase the capacity of its leadership group of disabled youth with a training and decided to go further and plan a civic engagement project that I partnered them with, which led to a proclamation by the City of El Paso and paid internships for the leadership group with the city.
Do you any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
A favorite childhood memory of mine happened at the age of 10. I was helping out in my mother’s first campaign for school board. We were in the middle of making camping signs, handmade signs out of doors, and there were all these people in the fellowship hall of our church, painting, hammering, drawing, etc. Everyone was so happy, coming together to help my mother do something unprecedented, because my mother was the first African American to run for school board in the history of Arlington, Texas. All these people came together to try to help my mother make our community a better place and it was at that point, seeing such a beautiful and powerful example of community, that I knew I had caught the politics bug. I’ve been working to help build community everywhere I go, every since.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.civicsolve.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CivSolve
- Twitter: https://x.com/CivicSolve
