Building Community Wealth in Imperial & San Diego CountIES

Welcome to the Collaborative

The Southern Border CERF Collaborative is a growing group of organizations committed to collaborating on a bi-county proposal for the Community Economic Resilience Fund (CERF).

By bringing together a set of regional planning tables across Imperial Valley and San Diego, our goal is to create a broad and inclusive proposal development and planning process to diversify and strengthen our local economies and grow sustainable industries that create high-quality jobs for all. Our core focus is to ensure that this collaborative and our shared proposal reflect the needs and priorities of communities and stakeholders across the region and generate ideas and project opportunities to build community wealth for years to come.

We will continue to expand this website and add key updates so that everyone can stay informed and contribute actively to the proposal development process. We invite you to join our growing collaborative. All are welcome and we encourage you to sign-up below to get involved.

“Community- and worker-centered inclusive economic planning has never been attempted at this scale. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated in stark relief that our economy did not work for all, and the same approach to economic planning is not an option. Although this process will be new and challenging, including voices that have been traditionally left out of economic planning is an important means to achieve equitable outcomes.”(CERF Planning Draft Guidelines April 22, 2022)

Add Your Organizations Name/Logo


As a collaborative, we are committed to an open and inclusive planning process. While our proposal has been submitted already, we want to make sure that we continue that commitment. You can sign up to join the growing partner list at any time! To do this, we are asking you to join us by adding your name to our collaborative below.

Please, fill out the form below to add your name and org!

a growing coalition

Below is a snapshot of the organizations that have been involved in CERF pre-proposal conversations in our region. To date, there are six key priority areas that have emerged organically from these early discussions. Each topic area is associated with organizations representing both counties and we anticipate lots of interaction across priority areas through the planning process. To explore further, you can hover your cursor over a topic or an organization to see how they are connected. 

Don't see your organization on the diagram below or notice a mistake? Please reach out! We’ll look forward to working with you to make sure your organization’s priorities are correctly reflected.
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get involved

To keep informed and engage in the CERF proposal development process, please share your name, organization, and email address. You will receive a survey asking about your priorities, the level of time you would like to dedicate to this process, and how to continually expand the Southern Border CERF collaborative to better represent regional needs and opportunities.

Thank you for sharing your contact information. We will follow up with you shortly.
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Additional Questions?

We want to hear from you. Please reach out to our co-conveners or fiscal agent.

Roque Barros, Jr.
Imperial Valley Wellness Foundation

rbarros@ivwf.org

Kathie Lembo
SBCS

klembo@csbcs.org

Susan Guinn
San Diego Regional Policy & Innovation Center

sguinn@sdrpic.org