INTRODUCTION: This slideshow provides an overview of new educational pathways which help people become skilled leaders and organizers advancing positive change for communities like their own.
The overview highlights approaches pioneered by a growing network of genuine community & college partnerships and pathways, many of which the Community Learning Partnership helped develop.
The overview highlights approaches pioneered by a growing network of genuine community & college partnerships and pathways, many of which the Community Learning Partnership helped develop.
The underlying theory of change
- Low-income communities and people of color must become prime movers in community, social and political change to ensure that the future responds to their needs and priorities.
- They therefore must build democratically controlled organizations to represent their interests, and they must hold those organizations accountable.
- Their success requires organizing a broad constituency with substantial power because there always will be great resistance to policy reforms which benefit disadvantaged communities.
- Their chances of success are enhanced when they enlist the power and influence of allies, partners and coalition.
- These challenges require concerted efforts to develop organizers and leaders with the commitment, vision, backgrounds and expertise which are needed.
- People with lived experience with poverty and discrimination bring unique insights, knowledge, credibility, and long-term commitment to this work. They also are uniquely qualified to be role models for other potential community leaders, organizers and agents of change.
- This work requires an understanding of the community’s culture and history of struggle, its economic, social and political environment, experience in organizing people and developing leaders, long-range vision and sophisticated strategy.
- While people can develop these capacities through experience, trial and error, they will develop far more quickly if they have an opportunity to learn them through a combination of highly relevant courses, practical experience, and critical reflection.
- Nonprofits have great difficulty raising sufficient funds for intensive paid internships to meet these needs alone.
- In scaling up and meeting the need for greatly increased numbers of deeply grounded, skilled and knowledgeable organizers and leaders. college-based programs can become an invaluable route for developing these capacities, but such programs must be shaped to accomplish this specific purpose, and this can best be done when practitioners and academics collaborate in developing stack-able credentials and educational pathways in genuine partnership with community leaders and organizations.
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CAN COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND LEADERSHIP BACKGROUNDS PROVIDE THE BASIS FOR GOOD LONG-TERM CAREERS? The Director of Learning for the Faith in Action national community organizing network, Catalina Morales Bahena tells the story of her career. |
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