Mili Bonilla

Title:

Director, Collaborative Training

Email Address:

Mili Bonilla provides overall support to the Coalition for Educational Justice, a citywide parent’s movement to improve New York City’s public schools in communities of color. She is responsible for strategic assistance, training, leadership development, and political building. She has worked as a community organizer and trainer for the last thirty years. In 1978, she began organizing as a co-founding staff and congregational-based organizer for the newly founded South Bronx People for Change. She organized South Bronx faith communities to address local problems and strengthen congregational power in rebuilding the South Bronx. In 1990, she went to work in Washington, D.C., with the Washington Inner City Self Help, creating a training project for Latino and African American members who were taking over abandoned housing and converting them to low-income cooperatives. In 1992, she co-founded and directed Mothers on the Move, a grassroots organization that organized parents and community residents in the fight to reform failing schools in Hunts Point/Longwood in the South Bronx. In 2000, she worked as a consultant and later as a project director for New York University’s Institute for Education and Social Policy, where she provided training and strategic assistance to community groups organizing for better schools. She holds a masters degree in community organizations and development from New York City’s Hunter College School of Social Work.