What is Colonia

This chapter chronicles the story of how the nonprofit intermediary organization Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) and a community organization, A Resource in Serving Equality (ARISE) Adelante, also known as ARISE, worked together to expand servant leadership among Mexican American immigrant families living in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. With their strong focus on equity, IDRA and ARISE embraced and then expanded the traditional 10 characteristics of servant leadership to include advocacy and action. This chapter describes the history and background of both organizations, relates the work of these two organizations to servant leadership, shows how they were able to expand servant leadership to advocacy and action, provides lessons learned, and discusses next steps for how other organizations might apply these additional two characteristics to increase equity.