b'The Strategic Planning ProcessThe Strategic Plan 2021-24 is strategies. Throughout 2020,This public-facing version ofthe culmination of a years work,members of the Planning teamthe Strategic Plan 2021-24 is involving reiterative input fromled all staff members, the Boardaccompanied by a dynamic MEDAs staff members, Board and a focus group of clients ininternal version, which enables of Directors, clients andactivities to review draft languageMEDA staff to elaborate on our stakeholders. The planningand discuss core concepts. core strategies and update the process was led by our StrategicWe retained all five Results fromdocument in accordance with Planning Team, consisting of staffour Strategic Plan 2017-20, whilechanging circumstances in the at the Chief Officer, Director andrevisiting our strategies andcommunity. The Strategic Plan Associate Director level. Startingadding a sixth Result to reflectalso informs two other annual in late 2019, this team convenedour nationwide nonprofitworkplans: cross-departmental on a regular basis to map outcapacity-building work. We alsoplans for advancing progress priorities for our results andrewrote our mission, vision andalong each of the six Results;Operations departments, refinevalues, plus reshaped our Theoryand plans for the evaluation of content and devise coreof Change. each individual program.DECISIONS ON LANGUAGE AND TERMINOLOGYIn this document, we use specific terms toLatina because the majority of our clients are describe the ethnic/racial identity andwomen, or pointed out that many younger socioeconomic status of the families who makeand LGBTQ community members use the up the majority of our service population. Wegender-neutral term Latinx. As such, the choice used a collaborative process to determineto use Latino in this document must also come which terms to use in this plan, including awith a sustained commitment to gender equity staff survey; additionally, there were guidedin all of our programming and operations.discussions with staff, the Board and a focusTo describe the socioeconomic status of our group of clients. clients and community members, we To describe the ethnic and racial identity ofinterchangeably use the terms low-income, our client base, we use the term Latinoworking-class, underserved, historically throughout this plan. Staff, Board andmarginalized and historically oppressed. We community members all noted that this choicedecided upon these terms because they would best engage Spanish-speakingreflect how the conditions our clients face are residents: In Spanish-speaking societies thepredominantly the result of long-term term Latinos refers to people of all genders,structural disparities, instead of suggesting not just men only. However, this decision doesthat our community members are not discount the diverse insights we received.themselves to blame for these broader Some staff members advocated for usingeconomic circumstances.14MISSION ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AGENCY'