For the past Twenty years, Cultiva Central Valley has been supporting grassroots community leaders (Primarily women/mothers) and building their civic engagement capacity through the Powerful People: Building Leadership for Healthy Communities leadership program. Powerful People focus on creating healthier and more equitable communities throughout California’s Central Valley by improving or creating policy, systems, and environmental changes. Our focus are families that have disproportionately been affected by health inequities and social injustices, and low-income people of color living in under-resourced and immigrantcommunities. At the core of Powerful People is a focus on the grassroots community who are the catalysts to influence real change in communities. The program is designed to help increase participants’ capacity to advocate for health-related environmental and policy changes they would like to see in their neighborhoods, schools, and home environments. The emerging leaders in the program exercise their role in helping children and their families lead healthier lives by learning the root causes of key community health issues, and learning ways to influence the environmental, political, and systemic factors that shape health. The program covers the following: assessing one’s community’s health, addressing community problems through advocacy, learning local government procedures, working with decision- makers, sustaining advocacy efforts, building relationships with allies plus hands on experience of civic engagement opportunities.