Natalia naranjo: cultivating community in Norristown, Pennsylvania
“Community has always meant showing up for each other, whether it was showing up for people after a house fire and needed help paying bills afterwards”
Natalia Naranjo, hails from Norristown, Pennsylvania, an urban-suburban community outside of Philadelphia, home to a large immigrant community.
While working as a community organizer for POWER Interfaith, Natalia works to bridge the gap between congregation members and local civic engagement. She credits her mother’s influence on her upbringing for being so community oriented as well as her childhood faith leader, Padre Gus, who taught her the importance of people-power. This early inspiration would serve as a moral compass for the work she would enter into as an adult, as she continues to organize in the realm of education justice, in the school district she graduated from.
Issues within Pennsylvania’s education system have been ever-persistent since Natalia was in the Norristown School System and Pennsylvania as a whole, as a recent finding found the state liable from withholding over 3 billion dollars in funding from Pennsylvania public schools. With this in mind, she organizes across her hometown bringing parents, local congregants and social justice advocates together.
“What I’ve found in my own experiences with my education is that the school district in Norristown has not been invested in for decades. Not only do students lack necessary resources, but parents are taking on added stress and responsibilities when the schools aren’t providing basic resources and support. There is no one person at fault, but there are a set of people that can fix this problem, and we plan to hold ourselves as parents and community accountable to ensure these problems are being fixed.
Her organizing efforts are built on cultivating relationships, and fostering an empowered and political community. Through the breaking of silos, she believes organizing together is the path forward to seeing change in her community. “I want people to see the way we have been stripped away of our power in Norristown, we are the county seat but the community doesn’t have a say outside of the 3 minute public comment option at city council and school board meetings. We have a chance to raise our voices and hold people accountable to their positions in these roles, and we want to create that change together.
Her mission and sentiments echo a true people-powered movement, involving courage, faith, action, and creating “a bigger we.”
