Too often, economic development is driven by elite institutions—leaving residents with little voice and few lasting benefits. St. Louis is demonstrating a different approach.
In St. Louis, WEPOWER is making the shift from high-impact traditional support of Black and Latinx small businesses to systems-level economic change. After approximately a year and a half of research, 3,000 hours of community design, and over 1,000 stakeholder engagements, WEPOWER and its partners released The New STL Economy PLAYBOOK: Planting + Growing Our Collective Wealth, with a focus on transforming St. Louis’ local economy in response to the racial-wealth crisis. The Playbook offers a community-designed and research-informed vision and roadmap for transforming the local economy to support the wealth and well-being of all families who call St. Louis home.
This conversation will highlight for funders, impact investors, and practitioners what it takes to shift from extraction to regeneration, and from programs to systems change through:
- Radically inclusive community design processes.
- The formation of local and national, public and private partnerships to advance the recommendations named in the community-developed Playbook.
- A phased systems change approach that begins with a local worker ownership initiative, public awareness, standing up a governance coordination body, and preparing for policy and legislative change.
