Altagether

Neighborhood Captains serve as liaisons for their micro-neighborhoods, connecting with approximately 40 nearby households. As representatives and acting as a communication hub, they:

• Check in with neighbors, listen, and empathize
• Help find answers to questions and connect households with resources
• Lead collective recovery efforts
• Ensure every resident is checked in on

Neighborhood Captains play a vital role in:

• Coordinating cooperative price negotiations for services on behalf of neighbors
• Identifying opportunities for mutual aid
• Acting as a link between neighbors and experts who can assist them
• Discouraging sales to developers by connecting residents with alternatives
• Connecting groups with residents for input
• Information dissemination from authorities

If you're going through it, chances are your neighbors might be too. As a neighborhood captain, you can help connect neighbors with other folks nearby to support their specific needs.

Each neighborhood can decide how best to stay connected—whether through in-person meetups, text groups, or standing virtual communication—based on the Captain's capacity and the neighborhood's needs.

Neighborhood Captains will:

• Designate their own map of neighbors who they would like to be the liaison for
• Attend a virtual, 1-hour onboarding to be trained in the process
• Attend a virtual, 1-hour check-in meeting every other week with other Captains to share resources and updates.
• Participate in a communication network to collaborate and stay informed with other captains

Absolutely! Many Neighborhood Captains are themselves displaced by the Eaton Fire. Your firsthand experience navigating displacement can be incredibly valuable to others in similar situations. You can still connect with and support neighbors from your area, even if you're temporarily living elsewhere. In fact, maintaining those connections while displaced can be especially meaningful for both you and your neighbors.

Yes please! Renters are vital members of our community and are encouraged to become Neighborhood Captains. Recovery affects everyone in the area, regardless of whether you own or rent. Your perspective and connections as a renter bring important diversity to our network of Captains.

Absolutely! In fact we strongly encourage having multiple Captains in each zone to share the work load, specialize based on their specific interests, skills, passions, and social connections.

John Mayo, Executive Director

John has called Altadena home since 2019, living on Madison Ave & Sacramento. He's a member of the Eagles 719 and was a frequent visitor to POV, Rancho, and Altadena Hardware to name a few. He doesn't hike as much as he should but he still loves the mountains at sunset and strolling around town with his dog. John brings professional experience as a training specialist and community organizer to Altagether, most recently as Lead Training Strategist for the Harris/Biden campaign in Wisconsin where he supported organizers and volunteer teams statewide.

Stefanie Lynch, Facilitator & Co-Founder

Stef is a resident of Highland Park whose extensive background in community organizing includes years with Planned Parenthood, working out of their Lake Avenue office across from Fox's. She served as Lead Organizer for Yes on Measure A in 2022, leading field strategy and operations while building coalitions with organizations including ACLU Southern California, Black Lives Matter-LA, Dignity & Power Now, and UNITE Here 11. Stef's connection to Altadena deepened when her best friends lost their home on Loma Alta and moved in with her.

We love that! We would be happy to support any existing networks or if you all are fine on your own, please just let us know what region you represent so we don't duplicate efforts. We would also love to learn from you about what has been working. Additionally, we can help you find any neighbors that might have been left off your list so far. Just reach out to us at info@altagether.org.

We take a trauma-informed approach to organizing and never want you to take on more than you can handle. Our basic structure includes:

• A one-hour virtual onboarding session
• Bi-weekly one-hour meetings with other Captains (optional but valuable)
• Time connecting with your neighbors (flexible based on your own bandwidth)
• Time spent with working groups (optional and up to each group to decide)

• Onboarding training and ongoing support.
• Contact info for people in your zone (names, addresses and phone numbers.)
• Regular check-in meetings with other captains.
• Access to various working groups focused on specific issues.
• Access to an online network (on Discord) for ongoing collaboration.
• A growing library of resources to help with outreach and organizing.