Faith In The Valley

Faith in the Valley’s mission is to unlock the power of people to put faith into action in the public square, and to advance a movement for racial justice and health equity. FIV seeks to build relational power, lift up a new narrative about the lives of people of color, and drive civic engagement efforts that move our community priorities forward. FIV builds intersectional relationships across race, faith, class and status that will increase capacity of individuals to act on behalf of those outside their center to create policy and structural change.

FIV’s model of organizing is authentically rooted in the local development and engagement of grassroots leaders most impacted by racial and economic justice issues to advance systems and multi-year policy change at the local, regional and state level. Through our core program of training and formation of volunteer leaders in community organizing and civic engagement, we are building a network of community leaders and clergy in the Central Valley who are equipped to transform their communities and the inequalities they face. They are the voices on the frontlines of our campaigns.

Our current issue campaigns include: ensuring a full Census count in hard-to-count areas of the Central Valley; increasing access to safe, healthy and affordable affordable housing; creating healthy communities; supporting immigrant communities under threat of deportation and loss of services; alternatives to incarceration and pathways to opportunity; violence prevention, police reform, restorative justice practices in education; and air pollution and climate change.

Our core programs and methodologies are embedded in a relational model of community organizing and civic engagement. Faith in the Valley seeks not only to increase civic engagement, but also to build community power to secure policy wins that reflect the experiences and perspectives of impacted Central Valley residents. In addition to our core program of leadership development and formation, our key strategies focus on strategic partnerships and alliances, research, community organizing and narrative shaping.

Our unique role in the community organizing and advocacy/policy field is to provide a clear moral voice to public policy discussions that is reinforced by the authority and power of real people who are rooted in local faith communities and organizing themselves to act together in focused issue campaigns. Faith in the Valley has a key set of partners around both our civic engagement and ongoing issue campaign work.
Part of the uniqueness of Faith in the Valley’s work is that it does not solely depend on paid staff. Faith in the Valley’s sustainability strategy is rooted in lay leadership teams at congregations that are serving (and will continue to serve) as a hub for ongoing grassroots leadership development and engagement. Faith in the Valley staff and leaders identify impacted community members who engage other individuals with similar experiences, creating more opportunities for ongoing engagement and leadership development to sustain this effort and its power building goals.

Additionally, with PICO CA federations across the state, Faith in the Valley participated in the launch of The Belong Movement, which will serve as a vehicle to strengthen our organizational capacity to develop multiracial, intersectional volunteer leaders who are deeply committed to a long-term vision rooted in the liberation of all oppressed people. Belong represents a significant departure from how most progressive or movement or social change organizations train and develop their members and community leaders. Most training programs are designed to produce desired short-term, tactical campaign outcomes. Instead, we are developing a leadership formation program that will transcend narrow “self-interest” and help community leaders both understand the structural drivers of exclusion and build lasting relationships rooted in kinship. For this reason, the Belong Movement will serve as a vehicle for fundamentally evolving the culture of power-building organizations in ways that help us not just win long-term structural reforms but also achieve human transformation.

Since the launch earlier this year, FIV began and is continuing to hold a series of Belong Circles in communities across the Central Valley to build intersectional relationships across race, faith, class and status that will increase capacity of individuals to act on behalf of those outside their center to create policy and structural change.

Representing 100 congregations from various faith traditions and across five counties of the Central Valley, we are the largest congregation-based community organizing coalition in the region, which spans over 200 miles. We have a track record of over 20 years doing this work in the Central Valley, previously as five separate organizations and more recently merged as one regional organization. This new regional structure enables us to be more efficient administratively and to provide a more consistent and impactful training and support for organizers across all five counties.

Organizers with Faith in the Valley are trained and developed to bring grassroots leaders and congregations to a shared table of addressing the most pressing pains and pressures facing our families and communities. Through a model and cycle of organizing, engaged leaders and congregations are trained on conducting research, listening to their communities more broadly, educating their elected officials, and developing their collective public voice for greater power.

In addition to our regional structure and being one of the only organizations to span the entire Central Valley, we are also uniquely positioned to change inequitable structures, policies and exclusive narratives in our region because of our work to unite various faith traditions and faith leaders around common beliefs in defending our most vulnerable neighbors and the right to human dignity for all.

By working with PICO California federations from across the state, FIV is also able to impact policy at the state level.

As a result of the year-round organizing, civic engagement and leadership training of impacted community members, Faith in the Valley (FIV) chapters have not only built the momentum to advance major public policy wins, but are also playing key roles in shaping implementation and in spreading and scaling similar change from one Central Valley community to another.

For example, the breakthrough housing program that Fresno championed is now being replicated in Stanislaus county. In Fresno, FIV launched an accountability and monitoring campaign to ensure full and complete implementation of the breakthrough Rental Housing Inspection Ordinance (RHIA) that they won. After conducting door to door canvassing, gathering evidence to monitor City of Fresno enforcement practices, sharing information about RHIA and tenant’s rights and pushing past implementation delays, the proactive random inspections began last summer. To date 66% of the initial inspections have failed and 92% units passed re-inspection, which means that improvements were made to 2,428 units by July 2019, resolving basic health and safety issues that were an imminent danger. Additionally, our ongoing canvassing outreach is helping to target inspections and ensure that units do not fall through the cracks.

We expanded our housing work to Stanislaus County where we supported grassroots leaders and tenants in in research and advocacy to shape a city-wide routine rental housing inspection program, modeled after the Fresno policy. Because of FIV’s regional structure, we have been able to leverage relationships with powerful opposition in counties throughout the region and in part because of these relationships, there is agreement on the urgency to move a policy forward in Modesto.

Additionally, FIV San Joaquin successfully advocated for the adoption of a program called Advance Peace in Stockton, which removes barriers and creates opportunity for system impacted and the formerly incarcerated through the creation of life map goals, mentorship, social services, internships and other pathways to opportunity and employment. Leaders in Fresno are now working to replicate a similar program in their community.

Finally, we launched the Valley Watch Network, to coordinate our Rapid Response efforts throughout the Central Valley from Stockton to Bakersfield. Since its inception, our Rapid Response hotline has received over 4,500 calls, and provided accompaniment and legal referrals to many people. We did extensive Know Your Rights outreach and developed the Fresno County Legal Defense Fund to offer legal assistance to immigrants under threat.


All of Faith in the Valley’s work is non-partisan. We do not endorse or engage in any activity in support of or in opposition to candidates for public office. Our work is focused on non-partisan, non-lobbying community education and engagement. Occasionally, it includes direct or grassroots lobbying, and in these cases we use unrestricted funds.