What is PEPP?
PEPP is a grassroots organization located on the border of Minnesota and North Dakota.  Over the past 20 years, PEPP has been working in Moorhead, MN, Fargo, ND and rural North Dakota in grassroots and community organizing efforts. PEPP began in 1986, and evolved from a small group of women seeking economic justice, into a builder of organizations and defender of People Rights.  PEPP was organized July 13, 1986, Incorporated 1988 and received non-profit status 1990. 

PEPP is multi-issue organization and has focused on issue campaigns, developing leaders, training organizers and providing capacity building expertise to increase social change efforts of community based and service organizations in the FM community.  PEPP’s successes are numerous.  To name a few: PEPP has won on community issues that stopped cuts in Human Service Programs in North Dakota and Minnesota. PEPP has held the City of Moorhead accountable in the spending of Public money for more affordable housing and better neighborhoods. PEPP has assisted neighborhood groups in developing organization and taking on safety, police and livability issues.  PEPP has assisted in the start-up and development of many small grass roots based non-profits groups and continues to provide Technical Assistance to these groups. PEPP has worked with students, new Americans and low-income neighborhoods and has engaged these constituencies in Participatory Democracy. PEPP lead a coalition of organizations to register over 1300 new voters in the fall elections in 2004.  PEPP has engaged hundreds of college students in local get out the vote campaigns, door knocking in low-income neighborhoods, political forums, candidate accountability, and service learning in Community Organizing. PEPP has created  broad-based coalitions in the Fargo-Moorhead Community to develop a movement dealing with affordable housing issues, the expansion of human rights education, protection and government accountability.

Our most recent efforts have been to engage the local nonprofit community in Civic Participation though Waking the Sleeping Giant.  We have been holding training sessions on how Nonprofits can lobby and how they can engage in influencing policy and be active and engaged in the issue work.  We recently completed training with over 100 people present representing over 80 Nonprofits.  This session has lead to an action plan process that has a coordinated effort for Nonprofits to do tangible work that centers on engaging Nonprofits in social policy work that focuses on local issues, engaging their constituencies and to impact of the Federal Budget.  Monthly meetings, strategy sessions and organizing action plans have been coordinated with the participants and current efforts are being made to engage the groups in further advocacy and organizing during 2006.

Who Makes Decisions at PEPP?
PEPP is a membership-based organization and we use Community Organizing tools for outreach.  We use the one-on-one method of active listening to develop relationships and assess self-interest.  All Board leaders, staff and volunteers are trained in this technique.  We also are using a listening session process developed by the Hope Community in Minneapolis.  We have been holding listening sessions in homeless shelters, organizations, neighborhoods in trainings and in classrooms to listen to the community, agitate them around power and organizing and to develop core issues from the community. 

We are interested in people who seek a public life and who seek power.  During our monthly training’s we have drawn in many members of the community representing Somali, Sudanese, and Bosnian, Latinos, white American, GLBTQA, able-bodied, and Independent Living advocates, students and community representatives.  We have done intensive Organizing training, listening sessions, one-on-ones and leadership development work.  We now have a core of nearly 40 people who are engaged in leadership building activities on the PEPP Board, through the Reclaiming Democracy! Get out AND Vote project, through structured workshops, through an affordable housing campaign, though media work and through office and administrative volunteerism.  All activities are opportunities for a public life and leadership development.
There are formal and informal ways to get involved in PEPP.  The informal is done by outreach from current staff, board, and volunteers.  We do this outreach at our informational meetings, organizational events, fundraisers, workshops and strategy sessions in the community.  We simply invite people to get involved, watch their efforts, visit with them and find out about their self-interest, then we give them tasks connected to the work, such as door-knocking, inviting others in their neighborhood to an event or meeting, planning the meeting, participating in the meeting or other significant elements of the organizing work.  As people get more involved and show interest, we invite them deeper into the work.  They then may become active PEPP Members, may consider being on the board or on an active committee.  Many times, leaders emerge through our issue work and move on to create their own organization within their community.  Some examples are Mujeres Unidas, Centro Cultural, the Women’s Political Action, and the Immigrant Economic Development Center.  All of these groups worked with PEPP and eventually formed their own organization and remain as strong allies.

The formal is mostly connected to applying to be on the PEPP Board.  We have a process of an application, interview, attendance at a board meeting and formal appointment to the board.  The Leader then runs for election at the annual PEPP Membership meeting for a three-year term. PEPP is a membership-based organization and we ask members to pay yearly dues, support PEPP’s vision and mission and members vote in board leaders, by-law amendments and help set the yearly direction for PEPP.

Who works at PEPP?
Duke Schempp is the Executive Director of PEPP and has worked in the Organization as a Board leader, an Organizer, and the Executive Director for over 16 years. He supervises Organizers, develop work-plans, provides training, develops leaders and works on all aspects of PEPP.  Lysa Ringquist, co-founder, past Board Member and current Community Organizer is PEPP’s lead Organizer and supervises and mentors Organizers and Organizer apprentices.

Duke Schempp--Board Member of PEPP from 1988 to 1990 became Community Organizer in 1990 until taking Director position in 1991.  Received BA Anthropology MSU 1986, trained in Community Organizing and non-profit management since 1991.

Lysa Pearl Ringquist--Co-Founder of PEPP, 1986, AA in Liberal Arts MSU 1987.  Volunteer Board Member 1986 to 1998, Welfare Rights Organizer 2000-2002.  Community Organizer 2002 to Present.  Completed numerous leadership, Antiracism and Community Organizing trainings during the past 19 years.  Graduate of the Minneapolis based Organizer Apprenticeship Project training for Community Organizers in 2002.

Who does PEPP work with?
PEPP has always focused on people who are living at or below the poverty level and those who are considered the working poor.   PEPP works in Both Fargo, ND and Moorhead Minnesota and surrounding communities.  We face issues of the state border in our work and do focus on specific Moorhead and Minnesota issues as well as Fargo and North Dakota and community wide efforts.  We are interested in people who seek a public life and who seek to build power within their community.  During the past year, our training’s have drawn in many members of the community representing Somali, Sudanese, and Bosnian, Latinos, white American, LGBTQA, able-bodied, and Independent Living advocates, students and community representatives.  We have done intensive Organizing training, Listening Sessions, One-on-Ones and Leadership Development work.  We now have many opportunities for community members to be engaged in leadership building activities on the PEPP Board, through the Waking the Sleeping Giant Civic Engagement work, Get out AND Vote efforts, through structured workshops, through an affordable housing campaign, though media work and through office and administrative volunteerism.  All activities are opportunities for a public life and leadership development.

About Moorhead---According to 2000 census information, Moorhead is 92% white, 4.5% Latino, 1.8%, Native American, 0.7% Black, and 1.2% Asian.  For the past 10 years, this community population of persons of color has increased from 4.5 percent in 1990 to 6.1 percent in 1997, and the people who are Latino have increased from 2.4 percent in 1990 to 3.4 percent in 1997, with people moving to Moorhead from the southern United States and Mexico.

As of March, 2006, PEPP had five Board Leaders and will be appointing four new leaders in  the winter.  The PEPP Board is working on it’s representation in the community and the current board recruits represent more diversity for the board.  Efforts are being made to support a broader diversity representing the LGBT community, the Disability community and Communities of Color.

Volunteers
PEPP has core volunteers that focus on organizational events, workshops, training and issue campaigns.  Our numbers fluctuate, depending on what we are doing in the community.  PEPP has a PEPP Fest committee that is working on a summer celebration of PEPP’s 20^th year. The committee is being formed in Early February and will consist of nearly 30 volunteers.  We have an number people volunteer in our building and do organizational work and administrative duties.  Most of the community is connected to PEPP through our organizing work.  Currently, we are working on a neighborhood organizing effort in the Greenwood Mobile Home Park Community in Moorhead and are developing a group of neighborhood leaders to move the neighborhood of 100 households from the grip of a slum-lord to being a co-op owned by the people living in the park.  We are working a dozen strong leaders in that effort.  Key Leaders represent the Latino community, the Native American community and low wage workers living in Moorhead.  We are continuing our relationship building of the new American and immigrant community by working with a past PEPP Board Leader, Fowzia Adde in the formation and emergence of the New American and Immigrant Development Center. Fowzia was trained as an Organizer by OAP and was mentored by the PEPP Organizer.  We actively support the project and are interested in the Organizing component and offer strategy and mentoring for Fowzia and the Leaders in the project.  We have a strong connection to college students and are working with two dozen students in the development of student organizing in local housing, parking, tuition and other issues pertinent to students in the community.  The students represent Latino, African American, Native American and white communities and are connected to Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia College.  Students lack a voice in city council and regional government and they are a huge voting constituency in Moorhead.

We are also working with nonprofits and their constituencies in the “Waking the Sleeping Giant” effort.  Here we are bringing the nonprofits in Fargo and Moorhead together to build an active alliance that will organize on issues important to nonprofits, promote civic engagement and activate their constituents to impact housing and health care policies at a local regional state and federal level.  We have between 30 and 50 people engaged in this work and represent nearly 80 nonprofits in our community.

Our Allies
Through our work within the Greenwood Mobile Home Park, we have forged a strong working alliance with APAC and are able to share ideas, strategies and have access to APAC staff quarterly.  APAK is located in Minneapolis, MN and focuses on Mobile Home Park organizing across the state on Minnesota.  APAK connects us to mobile home park organizing and their experience helps us with our strategies. We are also working with Legal Services of NW Minnesota.  They are the legal arm of our strategies to deal with individual issues and we take on the organizing and system issues.  We also have much potential in working with The Churches United, Dorothy Day House and the YWCA homeless shelters.  Although their missions are service directed, they give us access to people and the most pertinent issues on the street.  Another goal is to tap into the churches through the Moorhead Justice Circle to develop allies in the Faith community for this effort. 

Our formal connection to the local Universities have given us opportunities to work with students and then move students into organizing around housing issues and political organizing.  We have a strong relationship with the MSUM Social Work Department and this will result in great access to students and groups on campus.  Students are very often pitted against families in the housing debate.  Our intention is to create an allied group of students to be a component of the Tenant organizing.

PEPP’s relationship with other organizations working with similar missions
Very few organizations in this community have organizing or leadership development in their mission.  That is the problem we are addressing.  We are developing alliances as an effort to engage service-based organizations in organizing training and action.  The goal has not only been to shift power and win on issues, but to create a culture of organizing in the Fargo-Moorhead Community. PEPP is building alliances and coalitioning with Mujeres Unidas, the Women’s Network of the Red River Valley, the Pride Collective, Legal Services, the Justice Circles, new American groups, local homeless shelters and social service driven agencies.  Most of these groups are focusing on some systemic issues; however, none are doing organizing and leadership development.

We offer access to community organizing training to any group interested in exploring systemic change work.  We provide training for free and also charge when groups are able to pay fees.  We work with many non-profits and have a formal relationship with Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia College.  Students from both institutions are provided access to Internships, service learning opportunities and community organizing training.  

We also provide direct Technical Assistance and access to technology to small grass roots based non-profits and groups.   PEPP provides free office space, meeting space, organizing training, Internet access and e-organizing services to several community groups and new organizations.  PEPP is working with local shelters, homeless organizations, refugee/New American groups, Latino/Latina organizations, Human Rights groups and tenant-based organizations.

Other Additional information
It is important to highlight that PEPP is on the edge of Minnesota and North Dakota.  The issues of living on a border become important when assessing the impact of community building and organizing.  Our community is isolated and few organizing resources are available to us.  Much of our expertise comes from urban areas such as Minneapolis/St. Paul and Chicago.  We want our community to become self-sufficient and develop its own resources, organizers and funding.