"People Under the Heels of Oppression Should Be the Ones Leading": Using Ella Baker's Community Building Praxis for Innovative Strategic Planning and Youth Justice Coalition Building

This paper presents UBUNTU Research and Evaluation’s partnership with Kids Forward to co-design a strategic planning process for a Wisconsin-based, BIPOC youth justice coalition, guided by the radical community-building praxis of Ella Baker. To be responsive and responsible for community indigenous knowledge, removing the hierarchy and harm of extraction, UBUNTU researchers utilized the three-prong approach of Ella Baker’s community building praxis: (1) critical self-reflexivity, (2) radical listening, and (3)networking for social justice knowledge. A cornerstone of this work was the design and facilitation of community listening sessions—a vital method for activating collective creativity, surfacing lived experience, and co-generating the foundation of the strategic plan. These sessions served as sites of radical listening and truth-telling, where youth, families, and community members collaboratively envisioned the purpose, structure, and priorities of the coalition. This paper demonstrates how strategic evaluation can serve as a practice of collective responsibility and imagination.