As background for setting its agenda, the Community Learning Partnership conducted a study of the current state of higher education related to community organizing, community development and social change in the US. It was published, read quite widely, and then republished with the following introduction.
Strategy for Progress on Poverty, Race and Community-Building (PDF)
When this report was published two years ago, it hit a responsive chord in the United States and internationally. Comments on the report and our experience since its publication have shown the pattern it described to be universal.
There are three interwoven strands in that pattern. First, in the US and throughout the world, there is a desperate shortage of people who are expert at bringing poor people together to build strong organizations and movements for tackling the immense issues they face daily — society's most fundamental issues of entrenched poverty, prejudice, and people being left behind.
Second, domestically and internationally, pitifully few colleges or universities have created educational programs to address that often crippling "pipeline" crisis. This difficult work is left almost entirely to nonprofits.
Third, the university educational programs which do help people learn how to be effective community change agents suffer from being isolated, marginalized, and held back from developing the breadth and depth which would maximize their value. This pattern is as common in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe as in the United States.
The people who have pioneered important programs in the emerging academic field we call Community Change Studiesrs ago, it hit a responsive chord in the United States and internationally. Comments on the report and our experience since its publication have shown the pattern it described to be universal. There are three interwoven strands in that pattern. First, in the US and throughout the world, there is a desperate shortage of people who are expert at bringing poor people together to build strong organizations and movements for tackling the immense issues they face daily — society's most fundamental issues of entrenched poverty, prejudice, and people being left behind.
Nevertheless, these pioneering efforts have resulted in impressive examples of the pay-off of practitioners and academics working together to create learning opportunities for the community organizers, developers and leaders who are sorely needed throughout the world. These programs help the next generation learn how to play these roles with unusual skill, broad knowledge, and sophisticated strategies. They thus contribute greatly to the success of efforts to involve grassroots people as leaders in transforming their own communities and expanding opportunities.
Since writing the report, the Community Learning Partnership has had an opportunity to concentrate heavily on these issues with others in the US and internationally. This experience has surfaced important additional examples of highly creative Community Change Education programs which are tailored to meetlocal needs. As with the programs profiled in this report, they vary tremendously, from midcareer Masters programs in Tanzania and rural Uganda to organizing apprenticeship programs and new courses on community organizing and civic education in the US. Collectively they offer valuable lessons for us all.
Recent experience has fortified our earlier conclusions on the urgent need to develop concerted strategies for strengthening current Community Change educational programs and establishing new ones. In the US it is also providing us with exciting opportunities to work with others in creating new programs which focus specifically on educating people of color and others from low-income and working-class neighborhoods for important the next generation learn how to play these roles with unusual skill, broad knowledge, and sophisticated strategies. They thus contribute greatly to the success of efforts to involve grassroots people as leaders in transforming their own communities and expanding opportunities.
As a result, the Community Learning Partnership is now pursuing a three-part strategy for expanding University Education for Community Change. This strategy includes:
Developing and enriching pilot educational programs which are tailored to provide young and midcareer people with new opportunities to develop their knowledge, skills, effectiveness and impact as organizers and leaders of community and social change efforts;
Developing new ways of encouraging others to learn from these programs and to launch 6 University Education for Community Change new initiatives which respond to local needs and opportunities for expanded education and training for community change agents; and
Developing new networks to enable now isolated academics and practitioners to learn
from and collaborate with each other in building this important new field of study.
Some of this work has been focused internationally, bringing together leaders in the
field of Community Change Studies for peer
learning and collaboration across the globe.
Through the International Working Group on
University Education for Community Change,
a number of us are collaborating to provide
educators and activists from different countries
with new opportunities to learn from the highly
creative programs which are emerging in different parts of the world. Our goals are to help them use this knowledge to broaden current
programs and develop new ones, while also
helping generate the recognition and resources
their programs need to expand and succeed.
Through this international collaboration we
are learning that we share a common vision of
the key components and values for any program of Community Change Studies. This
vision is remarkably similar despite the rich
variations in our programs, each of which is
deeply grounded in local needs and circumstances.
A number of key concepts and strategies
have emerged as we have combined on-the-ground program development with exploring
theory and practice. These should be useful
to others who share our interest in expanding education and training for people seeking
to create significant community and social change.
One central point of consensus emerged
during a two-day meeting at New York
University. All the participants agreed that
three areas of study should be combined in
education and training programs on community change so students have the full
range of knowledge and skills they will
need. These are depicted in the Venn diagram
below. They include mastery of:
the tools of collective action — getting
people involved and participating, organizing them for action, and helping them build
movements and organizations through which they can have a growing impact;
strategic thinking, analysis and reflection (or STAR) – helping people understand
the environments in which they are working, including analyzing trends, power,
and potential allies, and developing their
skills in strategy and reflection so they can
become increasingly effective; and
knowledge of the specific issue(s) they are
most concerned about, including understanding the root causes, current policies,
how decisions are made, and alternative
strategies for creating significant change.
The values and vision behind community
change work are also consistent from country
to country. They provide a guiding framework
which underpins all our thinking and planning.
The principal values which unite us are:
a bedrock commitment to democracy, to
strengthening democratic practice, and to
helping ordinary people create social and
community change from the bottom-up;
and
an equally strong commitment to justice
and to helping community leaders and
grassroots organizations and movements
build the strength, vision, and practical
programs and policies which are needed to
significantly reduce poverty, discrimination
and exclusion.
Members of the Working Group are candid in acknowledging that most of their own programs do not yet offer this breadth. Instead
they focus on developing only one or two of these forms of expertise. One key reason is that — because the importance of Community
Change Education is not yet widely recognized — they find it extremely difficult to garner the
resources and bring together the faculty and practitioners needed to broaden their programs
to offer a full range of courses and field experience.
Despite this reality, the Working Group's
members strongly desire to achieve that balance and richness in their own curricula
and in programs which are developed in the
future. We find that Community Change
Studies programs are most successful when
they combine these three key elements in
an integrated program within a framework
which reflects the strong common values
and vision which are central to community
change.
We have fleshed out each of these three
areas of competency in the table on page 7
showing the skills and knowledge which are
needed by people who are seeking substantial
improvements in their communities and major
policy and institutional reforms.
The Partnership sees knowledge of the
"tools of collective action" as being fundamental to any significant change strategy.
Democratic change requires the involvement
of large numbers of people in setting the agenda, taking the leadership, and making major
decisions. Creating this level of involvement
requires skill in fostering people's participation
and channeling it into action.
How deep must a person's collective
action skills and knowledge be? That
depends upon the roles he/she plays and
the strategies their organizations follow.
Professional "organizers" organizing large numbers of people to build power and press major
institutions for reforms need extensive skills
in every aspect of collective action, including
leadership development and sophisticated
campaign strategy development. Those who concentrate instead on service delivery or community development programs or on community change education need a basic grounding in participatory techniques to ensure their
approach is democratic and their programs
are responsive to community needs, accountable to the people they serve, and successful
in accessing resources from recalcitrant public
agencies or other institutions. The following
diagram illustrates this need among different
levels of knowledge which are required by different types of community workers — developers, organizers and service providers.
In addition, it is important to incorporate
three ways of learning into each curriculum.
Together they reinforce each other, deepening
a student's mastery of the subject and his/her
ability to apply their new knowledge and skills
in their community work. As illustrated below,
these three techniques for learning are:
reading and classroom work, including
attention to theory and to learning from the
experience of others;
experiential education through field work
with expert mentoring; and
a strong emphasis on disciplined reflection
which deepens each student's learning from
both theory and practice.
Cooperative educational approaches which
combine study, work and reflection are particularly powerful. Highly realistic situations
create great opportunities for people to test
the theory and ideas they gain from reading, research, and discussion. And "academic"
programs enable practitioners to go beyond
the immediate issues they face to analyze their
historical context, examine root causes and the
roles various institutions play, and learn about
the widely varying, often highly creative strategies which others have pursued in addressing
those issues.
Experienced practitioners clearly have
important roles to play as educators, bringing great knowledge and skills to teaching in
this field. However, their full involvement in
university programs is still rare. While some
college programs involve practitioners as formal adjunct faculty-members, or in co-teaching with regular faculty, or as guest lecturers
or "community scholars", there are tremendous
barriers to involving practitioners in these
ways. Unlike medicine and other fields in
which "clinical" professors are understood to
be essential, community change educators are
often based in academic departments which
are leary of being too practice-based. Their
reward systems are usually biased against faculty-members who stress field work, multidisciplinary studies, or community service rather
than research, and promotions are contingent
upon success in publishing heavily researched
and highly academic articles in prestigious
journals.
Academics can make tremendous contributions in developing people's knowledge
and skills related to community and social
change. In particular, experts in learning
techniques and in developing people's analytic
and strategic capacities can add greatly to
the depth of the understanding, thinking and
learning skills of their students, be they traditional students or activists, organizers, developers, researchers, or otherwise engaged in
bringing about social change.
Furthermore, anchoring practitioner
education in colleges and universities can
add greatly to its credibility and enables
practitioners to earn credentials and the
comcomitant respect and influence. Other
advantages of higher educational institutions? Their unparalleled access to young
people and to special funding streams from
government and philanthropy for tuition subsidies, scholarships, program development and
other purposes.
Leading nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations have, of course, created
their own training programs, many of which
are of exceptional quality. In the US, for
example, some national community organizing networks offer 2, 5, 10 or 20 day training
programs on organizing, plus additional in-service education. There also are nonprofit-run
certificate programs in community economic
development (as well as university degree programs) in that field. To date, however, none of
these nonprofit-initiated programs offer their students college credit – an especially significant benefit for people who, because of income
or other barriers, have not had an opportunity to earn academic credentials which can help them in their careers. Furthermore, these
nonprofit training programs are starved for
resources: unlike college-based programs they
do not have access to streams of government
funding for tuition, scholarships, stipends or
seed money.
Practitioners feel the pipeline crisis acutely.
Many see the need to design dramatically new
pathways into organizing and for "continuing
education" programs to enable practitioners
to gain the knowledge, practical experience,
and academic credentials which will help
them increase their impact. The Community
Learning Partnership therefore is working with
community organizers, nonprofit leaders and
academics in several American cities to build
new partnerships between the nonprofit and
academic sectors to tap into the talent and
resources each sector offers, creating ambitious new educational programs which respond
to the talent crisis.
Another key concept which is emerging
from the Partnership's work is the need to
create lifelong learning opportunities in the
field of community change. Because of the
complexity of the challenges which poor and
excluded people face and the barriers to significant social change, change agents need access
to additional training, education, and assistance at different points in their careers. This
starts with making young people aware that
they can have careers in which they are paid
to tackle issues of poverty, discrimination, and
community development, while also creating
new educational pathways into those careers.
It includes opening up learning opportunities
in high schools, community colleges, and universities to provide the combination of "hard" skills, theoretical understanding, and competencies in strategic thinking, analysis and
research skills which effective organizers need.
And it includes opportunities for midcareer
education when people are at important junctures, especially when they need the stimulus
of being with peers, teachers and trainers,
focusing on challenging issues they face, being
exposed to new ideas, analyses, and strategies
which are new to them, and preparing for the
next stages in their careers.
Pioneers in Community Change
Education therefore have developed specific
programs which are geared to be helpful at
different points in people's careers. The following chart illustrates the continuum of lifelong learning in community change studies.
In our work in the US, the Learning
Partnership has identified four major sources
of potential candidates for careers in community change. These are depicted in the chart
below.
At the Partnership, we have chosen not
to focus on recent college graduates at this
point but instead to concentrate on the other
three talent pools. We have made this choice
so we can focus heavily on the fundamental
problem which gravely weakens community
organizing and change work in the United
States today – the shortage of people of
color and low-income people as organizers
and community change agents.
This shortage now feeds on itself in a
vicious cycle. On the race issue, for example, because there are few organizers of color,
there are relatively few minority candidates for
advancement to positions as executive directors, consultants, and trainers. This pattern
contributes to the perception among many
minorities that the community organizing field
is dominated by whites. This in turn reduces
organizing's ability to attract people of color
into organizing and community change work.
To help break this cycle, we are concentrating on two approaches.
First, we are focusing on creating programs for new organizers and leaders, especially people of color and people from lowincome and working class neighborhoods.
The goal of these programs is to address
directly the often crippling shortage of community organizers and change agents who –
because they have directly experienced poverty
and exclusion are particularly well-equipped
to lead and organize efforts to change these
conditions. The programs therefore include:
targeted recruitment efforts through a system of "spotters" in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color;
curricula which address issues of identity,
race, class and gender as well as the combination of practical experience and knowledge-building which organizers need;
pathways which start with practical training outside university walls and morph into
college degree programs linked to continuing on-the-job experience with organizing
campaigns;
programs which allow a person to earn credentials as they advance, proceeding step
by step from credit for individual courses to
a college certificate, AA, BA and advanced
degrees; and
a combination of stipends or salaries and
low or free tuition to make the education
affordable.
To make these programs sustainable and able
to move to scale, CLP and its local partners
are leveraging the impact of their private funding by designing programs which take full
advantage of existing flows of government
funds. These include:
youth employment stipends;
subsidized tuitions in state and local institutions of higher education;
federal stipends through VISTA and other
Americorps programs; and
the $4725 those programs grant to their graduates for education.
Most of these resources are, of course, not
available to stand-alone nonprofit training programs.
Second, we are beginning to work with others in the US to address the need for intensive midcareer education for organizers.
Our shared goal is to reduce the rapid turnover which is now hemorrhaging community
change work. We believe that midcareer seminars and educational programs can reduce
turnover substantially if they are designed specifically to address staff burnout and discouragement, providing them with a respite from
their normal pressures and an opportunity
for renewal. These programs should provide
people who already have 5, 10 or more years
of experience with opportunities for reflection,
peer learning and support, intellectual stimulation, and renewal of their vision and sense of
vocation. They also should enable participants
to develop new skills and strategies, prepare
themselves for growing management and leadership responsibilities, and earn a graduate
certificate or degree. Involving academics who
are grounded in community work as well as
leading organizers and community change
leaders from the US and overseas would add
greatly to the appeal and stimulation midcareer programs can offer.
In early planning for one possible midcareer
program in the US, we developed the following matrix to illustrate the mix of courses we
were considering. This listing provides an
example of the stimulating combination of
learning topics which could be included in
a new Master’s level program in Community
Change Studies.
The Work Ahead
Resources permitting, the International
Working Group plans to publish a book in
2010 on the current state of Community
Change Studies globally. Drawing from our
international research and dialogue and our
concentrated work in the US, it would set
forth a plan for developing this field of studies over the next 10-20 years. Central to this
plan would be the launching of an ongoing
international network, with subnetworks in
Latin America and other regions as well as
increased networking within the US. It would
include plans for creating ongoing opportunities for peer learning and collaboration on
common issues and on systematically growing this emerging field of study.
At the same time the Community Learning
Partnership will continue working with others
to expand Community Change Studies in
the United States. If the US is to successfully
address poverty and race and to strengthen
both our democracy and our communities, we
must greatly increase the number of community change agents with the skills and sophistication to work with local people on these
tough challenges. This will require that we
create new partnerships and educational pathways, supported with significant new private
and public funding and the best talent we can
marshall from the practitioner and academic
worlds.
We are finding the cross-fertilization of
ideas and approaches between US and international initiatives to be of tremendous value. It
enriches thinking in both spheres, exposing all
of us to an exceptionally broad range of experience and creative strategies. It also gives us
new perspective on how our individual work
fits into a broader worldwide process of knowledge-building on how best to foster democratic
change and greater social justice wherever we
live and work.
The Community Learning Partnership, 1301 Connecticut Avenue, Suite 500, Washington, DC
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