“Once you taste victory, you keep asking what’s next. That’s how the Aurora branch is. We’re very active and always moving.”

Eleven years ago, Liliana was picking up her son from school and was growing worried about him. He was in detention almost every day, and she wasn’t sure what to do.

A Parent Liaison at the school told Liliana about a training that might help her, so she went, not fully understanding what she was getting herself into. She had missed the Orientation and sat in the back, too shy to speak for the first few training sessions. As she watched and listened, she grew deeply connected when she realized she was not the only parent in the room struggling with something – whether it was a child misbehaving, finishing goals, or other challenges in their life. 

“Every session was something new to me and stuck with me,” she said.

That was Liliana’s introduction to COFI’s Phase 1: Self, Family & Team + Team Building training. It felt, she said, like an awakening. She set personal goals, started understanding why her son might be acting out, and learned how to tap into her leadership.

After that, she threw herself into COFI and started doing the advanced parent training. At one point, she was taking two trainings at the same time. She did another round of Phase 1 training in Elgin and was simultaneously doing Phase 2: Community Outreach & Action in Aurora. 

As her training deepened, she started seeing her community differently. 

“I saw inequities everywhere,” she said, recalling how one day she was paying closer attention to the kids walking to school in the rain and snow. She never felt bothered by it before, and now she was wondering what she could do to change how the school district managed school buses.

She talked to COFI’s Co-Director of Local Organizing, Sara, and asked what she could do and learned about which school board meetings were open to the public. She started collecting signatures and delivered them to the board. Within a year of starting, Aurora had more school buses. 

“Once you taste victory, you keep asking what’s next,” she said. “That’s how the Aurora branch is. We’re very active and always moving.”  

Within her branch and across POWER-PAC IL, Liliana has held many roles, but she’s one of the leaders who has been in Aurora since the beginning. She was even part of the group that named themselves Padres Activos because they were never passive and were always on the move.

Today, Liliana is also a peer trainer and COFI Board of Trustees member. She said she’s living a long-term goal she set for herself many years ago – tapping into other parents’ leadership potential the same way COFI training did for her.