What's on top?

Applications are now open for the 2019 Community Organising Fellowship for social and environmental justice campaigners. 

Are you looking to effectively build community power in your campaigns? Are you passionately working for environmental and social justice and looking to broaden your knowledge and experience in campaign strategy and community organising?

If the answer is yes, we encourage you to apply for the Community Organising Fellowship  This intensive 6-month program will give you the skills needed to strategise and build people power for social and environmental justice. The Fellowship includes:

• An annual cohort of 25 organisers who develop the core skills they need to confidently plan and implement winning campaigns

• Three residential workshops (a total of 17 days)

• A curriculum that includes guest speakers, experiential exercises and a series of practical tasks to master a toolkit for campaign strategy and community organising. Read about the topics and tools here.

• Mentoring and network support between and after workshops

• An extensive collection of training materials shared online and

• Support to design and lead workshops and develop leaders in your community.

In just five years, we’ve created a national network of more than 120 effective organisers who are leading many of Australia’s high-impact campaigns, as strategists and organisers. Our five cohorts have included activists from the environment and union movements, campaigns for Aboriginal self-determination and justice, refugee and asylum seeker campaigns, urban and rural communities, and many other social movements. We strive to welcome and maximise diversity.

Applications close September 30. Let me know if you need longer to prepare your application, or want to talk about our sliding scale of fees and opportunities for partial or full scholarships.

Click here to download the application form. Successful applicants and wait-listed applicants will be notified by early November. 

What people say about the Community Organising Fellowship: 

"For me a highlight of COF was the cross-movement learnings, the insights you get into how other movement orgs are winning, to the challenges of organising across movements, particularly around indigenous rights, the environment and social justice movements. Whilst we often operate in movement silos, the union movement has a lot to learn from the growth and development of these movements, and these are just as much union business as industry and bargaining campaigns.”

"The community organising fellowship has equipped me with skills as an organiser, connected me to many different organisations and created a community of organisers across the country of which I am part of. I definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to sharpen their skills as an organiser, grow their confidence and apply skills throughout the year."

"COF offers union organisers and activists not just the opportunity to broaden their organising practice, but to really deepen it. As well as offering strategic frameworks around building power and reach, building support etc, it offer tools to drill down into the why, what, where, who and when of on the ground campaigning."

"The community organising fellowship has helped to take me from being a self-taught campaigner to someone with a well-rounded knowledge of the practice and theory of organising, and has given me all the tools and resources I was hoping for as a campaigner. But the best aspect has been meeting and befriending an amazing group of fellow campaigners from around the country."

"If you have any desire to work in the community as an organiser, or your job requires you to encourage groups or individuals to participate in social change or build movements, this is the training for you. It will help you work and plan more strategically and give you skills that might, otherwise, take decades to develop. The process of training in a supportive and collaborative learning environment models effective organising and helps you build a sustaining network of people in a wide variety of disciplines."

Welcome to our 160 new subscribers this month. I hope this update provides useful links and resources to support your campaigning and activist education work.

Great online resources

Enews subscribers regularly share with us the websites and online resources they’re developing, discovering and learning from in their community organising. Enjoy this month’s batch and be sure to drop us a line to suggest links for the next enews.

Playbook for Progressives [book]

An organizing manifesto for the twenty-first century, Playbook for Progressives is a must-have for the activist’s tool kit. This comprehensive guide articulates pragmatically what is required in the often mystifying and rarely explained on-the-ground practice of organizing. Here, Eric Mann distills lessons he learned from over forty years as an organizer, as well as from other organizers within the civil rights, labor, …

Read more.

Upcoming learning opportunities and events

For details of other workshops and learning opportunities, visit our calendar.

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