The Change Agency is an independent activist education and research project. We work with civil society groups to help people clarify their purpose and develop plans that will enable them to focus their energies and achieve social and environmental justice outcomes.

We research social change, activism and advocacy. What is successful and what isn’t? How can people organise and work together more effectively? Based on our ongoing research we facilitate workshops for activists and community organisers and also share many of our resources on this site.

Our mission is to strengthen effective community and workplace action for social, ecological and economic justice by providing facilitation, workshops, resources, research and other learning opportunities.

Our key strengths lie in:

facilitation and activist education
training program development and advice
curriculum and resource development
strategic planning and campaign strategy
research, evaluation and analysis

We support effective community action is by organising, designing and facilitating workshops. We run workshops that are open to folks working in a range of social movements and design tailored in-house workshops with organisations to address specific challenges or priorities. Here’s a list of our most regular workshop themes.

We constantly develop new curriculum, and customise workshops to suit different group’s contexts and purposes.

Our online training resources are drawn from our workshops and the work of activist educators we know and admire. We have grouped them under the four dimensions of activist learning identified by US activist educator Steve Chase: social action skills; big picture thinking and political analysis (including strategy); organisational development and maintenance; and personal development and life skills.

The Change Agency mentor people engaged in social change work, to facilitate deep reflection about their work. Mentoring encourages activists and organisers to think and reflect in a confidential and supportive environment. Mentoring sessions typically involve reviewing the intervening period, identifying challenges, and workshopping ways to respond to challenges in the future. This can be a powerful aid to learning and development.

If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without ploughing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass