Engage for Change Workshop

Program Summary 

Engage for Change is an online, interactive Civics course that gives participants the tools they need to advocate for positive social changes in their communities.  Participants will learn the background and strategies for social change movements in North America. Participants will be encouraged to interact, organize, and collaborate on pragmatic solutions to community-based issues.

Participants will develop a plan for social change within their own community. Key activities will include clarifying a community project issue, identifying and collaborating with stakeholders and creating a draft pitch for a social change project with the use of case study examples.

Participants should have a sense of the various types of pragmatics in community organizing as well as a multi-faceted perspective of the view of various stakeholders within a particular community.

Audience

Adults and older youth who are interested in community advocacy and empowering neighborhood and local level improvements to their communities.

Program Achievements and Objectives

By the end of this workshop course, participants should have a sense of the various types of pragmatics in community organizing.  Participants will be encouraged to interact, organize, and collaborate on pragmatic solutions.  Participants will help each other advocate for various causes with an arsenal of peaceful intervention and education tools.

• Provide participants with real-life community-based communication and organizational tools to advocate for an issue or cause that participants are engaged with deeply.
• real-life community-based communication and organizational tools
• Increase networking and collaboration skills among grassroots, community-based organizations
• a sense of hope, determination, and an ability to be a transformative change agent in the community
• a project proposal for a social change project
• ability to analyze the effectiveness and various techniques used in case study social change projects.

Module Overview

Module 1:Social Change Project Introduction 

Participants will engage in activities to get to know each other and their experiences and strengths in social advocacy and community development.

Module 2:Social Change Project Proposal Example

An example of a current social change project will be presented an analyzed so that participants can gain the skills to later create and evaluate their own projects: including interview skills, action research, budgeting, networking, and publicity.  The current social project will be a real-life one wherein participants can help a community organization directly.

Module 3:Social Change Project Proposal 

Community development needs within participants’ own local communities will be identified. The stages and processes of community building projects will be applied with the skills above.  A proposal will be developed which can be further taken into the community after the course.  Initial contacts with identified community stakeholders can be made for later follow-through.

Module 4:Social Change Project Participatory Evaluation Rubric 

Participants will evaluate each other’s program proposals for effectiveness, clarity, and application.

Logistics

Program length: 4 weeks

Format: interactive online workshop

Section # and Schedule:

Expected workload per week is:

• 90 minutes of which is a weekly group meeting and project development.
• 5-3.5 hours is based on reading case studies and course notes as well as researching material for your upcoming proposal in the workshop session.
• 5 hours teleconference.

Weekly format:

Mon-Thur: 

Participants conduct a self-directed study and engage in 2-3 scheduled online discussions.

Thur. – Sat: Synchronous meeting (your mentor will work with the class to select the specific meeting day/time). A typical agenda is used to manage the meeting.

Fri – Sun: Group project/experience; group generates results and posts to the class on Canvas

Pre-requisite courses/knowledge:

This course is for people interested in community advocacy but who either 1) have experience in community organizing or 2) have taken the Engage for Change Classroom Course.

Required Media:

ACCESS TV’s Youtube channel.

This community TV show is currently taped in the downtown east side’s Carnegie Centre which is a hub in the Vancouver Downtown East Side run by the City of Vancouver.

Suggested Readings:

1. The attached reading Civil Rights Movement classification is a general and malleable list of definitions, or activities, for social advocacy that can be used for analyzing different group’s approaches. Please read these over for the Thursday/Friday online class discussions
2. Civil Movement Background Reading - this is a list of links of various organizations engaged in social change since the 1960s.  Read over the summaries in the reading. Peruse some of the links on the list that interest you. Be prepared to discuss some of the related questions below.  Your group will also be using some of these groups as activity examples in the latter part of the week.

Mentor(s): (To Be Determined)

Designers (s): Charles Coderre. M.Ed.