City of College Park Mayor Selected for the 2022 MICD Just City Mayoral Fellowship and the NLC Real Council Leadership
COLLEGE PARK, MD February 9, 2022 - The City of College Park is pleased to announce that Mayor Patrick L. Wojahn has been selected to join the 2022 Mayor’s Institute on City Design (MICD) Just City Mayoral Fellowship and has been appointed Vice-Chair of the National League of Cities (NLC) Race, Equity, and Leadership (REAL) program. “I am looking forward to working with my fellow mayors to explore how we can address injustices in our communities and pursue policies and practices that achieve greater racial equity” said Mayor Wojahn.
The Just City Mayoral Fellowship is a joint program of the MICD and the Just City Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. It will bring together a small group of mayors and city design experts from across the country to directly tackle racial injustices in each of their cities through planning and design interventions. Over this semester long program, mayors will identify how racial injustices manifest in the social, economic, and physical infrastructures of their cities and will develop action plans for their communities. Mayor Wojahn will be joined in this program by Kiaisha Barber, the City’s Director of Youth, Family, and Senior Services, as well as Raven Rodriguez, the City’s Racial Equity Officer.
The National League of Cities (NLC) REAL program was established in the wake of the 2014 unrest in Ferguson, MO. It offers tools and resources to help local elected leaders build safe places where people from all racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds thrive. Mayor Wojahn’s one-year term as Vice Chair on the National League of Cities REAL Council Leadership will enable him to play a key role to collaborate, network, and develop programs that can be replicated in communities across the country.
“Our member councils are the voices of what’s happening on the ground in our communities,” said NLC President Mayor Vince Williams of Union City, Georgia. “I am proud to have Mayor Wojahn lead NLC's REAL Council. Together with a team of local leaders from around the country, we will work to solve the most pressing challenges facing our communities and help fulfill the promise of our America’s cities, towns and villages.”
Participation in these programs are examples of the City’s commitment to work towards equity, a key objective in the City of College Park’s 2021-2025 Strategic Plan. The City has also created a Restorative Justice Commission (RJC), charged with recommending concrete restorative actions to the Mayor and Council to redress the harms impacting the current and past African American residents and their descendants in our Lakeland community. To learn more about the City’s Strategic Plan and the RJC, please visit ww.collegeparkmd.gov.
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News and media outlets are encouraged to contact Ryna Quinones regarding any inquiries or stories about the City of College Park. For all media inquiries, please contact her via email at rquinones@collegeparkmd.gov or by phone at (240) 487-3508.