Organising Community Change: Geelong and Surf Coast

A weekend workshop in beautiful Anglesea. The workshop will run over Saturday and Sunday. We encourage you to come on Friday night if possible.

Accommodation is available, more details below.

Reenergise your climate and community work.

Learn to tell your story, and the story of your group

- and make it compelling!

Nurture new leaders and participants.

Feel confident talking to media and politicians.

Build effective campaign teams.

The Organising Community Change Workshop uses the “Camp Obama” volunteer training programme, one of the most powerful organizing techniques ever used.

In the US, "Camp Obama" gave thousands of volunteers the skills to lead campaigns in their communities, leading to one of the most successful political campaigns in history.

This high-energy workshop will cover team-building, leadership development, getting great media coverage, and organizing a progressive movement that wins on issues like climate change.

There is a new movement of community groups in the Geelong and Surf Coast region. Climate, Transition and sustainability groups are popping up everywhere as the community takes the leadership role. (The Surf Coast Energy Group is now one of the largest community groups in the region!)

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This workshop aims to mobilise your collective capacity, so this movement can bring posiitve, creative change to our region.

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Who should come?

Anyone involved in taking action in their local communities is invited to take part - including members of Climate Action Groups, Transition Towns, school sustainability committees, or other grassroots groups. If you have thought about joining one or are running one, we’d love to have you!

We will not take over your process or ideas, rather, we will give you concrete strategies for expressing more clearly what YOU want to achieve.

The workshop is about mobilising change in individuals, but it will have the greatest impact if many group members can attend together. Sending one delegate is not the best way for your group to take advantage of this opportunity. (That said, if you're an individual who is not affiliated, but this really speaks to you - please come anyway!)

• Does your group have lots of ideas but lacks strategy and direction?

• Did you start with a big bang but now you're wondering what's next?

• Are you feeling overwhelmed by the negative political debate?

• Do the same two or three people end up organsing everything?
  

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This could be the kick along you need.

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Registration, Accommodation & Costs

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The workshop costs $40.

This is to cover the costs of venue, promotion, printing and lunches, drinks and snacks. The organisers and facilitators are volunteers.

Accommodation is available at $25 per night. Please pay this on the weekend.

Accommodation is in simple bunkhouse style cabins. http://www.eumeralla.com.au

We will fit in a walk in the beautiful bush and beach as part of the workshop.

FOOD:

All meals provided.

Please register on this site, even if you will be paying cash. This will simplify our administration as we can easily track who is coming and send you updates.

Paying for accommodation will be organised in a separate email. So please just pay $40 for the workshop here now.

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To register: Go to "TICKET INFORMATION" at the top of the page.

If you have a Paypal account or would like to sign up for one, you can pay online.

If you would rather pay cash at the workshop, click Show other payment options

And then click "PAY OFFLINE"

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Numbers are limited, so please avoid dissapointment by booking soon.

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REGISTER NOW at the top of the page.

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FAQ

What is the Organising Community Change Workshop?

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Movements are built by engaging many people in meaningful targeted action. But that can only happen if people have a clear structure, strategy and tools to keep people coordinated and moving in the same direction.

The challenge: It's not easy to create teams that produce concrete outcomes.

This workshop will provide a basic introduction to leadership teams including tactics to make them stable and effective. Learn how to build relationships and share stories that lead to commitment, engagement and passion. You will learn specific, step-by-step strategies for telling stories that lead to change.

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Why is story so important?

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Stories help to bring alive motivation that is rooted in values, highlighting each person’s own calling, our calling as a people, and the urgent challenges we face.

The analysis, the statistics, the science are important, but telling a story has the power to articulate the deeper values that motivate you, to transcend issue silos and polarized political debate.

“Values are experienced emotionally and help people access the moral resources – the courage, hope, and solidarity – that are required to risk taking a new direction. Telling your story effectively builds trust and engages others. Creating a public narrative is the art of translating values into action through stories. Each of us has a story to tell that can move others to action. Narrative is how we learn to make choices and construct our identities – as individuals, communities and nations.”*

When we are really confident in telling our stories, we can fully take up our roles, not as consumers, but as citizens who have a right to be heard in our democracy.

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The Story of Self

Why are you drawn to this work? You are not reading this on a whim. What’s your story?

What is the challenge you, personally, faced? What choice did you make in response to this challenge? What was the outcome?
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If you can tell your story, link it to the story of all of us, and the challenge we face, your advocacy will be charged with a memorable power.

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The Story of Us

We are all citizens taking action. We believe in independent, grassroots, community advocacy. We believe in conversation and collaboration. A lot of people are saying Australia can’t take action on climate change, that it will destroy us. But we don’t buy this. We believe Australia has the capacity to rise to the climate challenge. And that the rewards of action will outweigh the costs many, many times.

The Story of Now

The Story of Now is about the challenge we face - together, here, now - and the action that is required to rise to it.

We need to tell this story loud and clear in our communities, and do it over and over and over again. We tell it when the naysayers spread fear. We tell it when the politics goes sour. We tell it when we come together. We tell it when we're drifitng apart. It connects us and powers our best efforts, and then becomes our future.

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What is the relationship to Camp Obama?

The Obama campaign was the first to pioneer this particular type of community organising skills session – called Camp Obama. This workshop is based on that framework – in particular on the amazing work of Joy Cushman and Marshall Ganz – who have helped put advise on the content.

You can find out more about Camp Obama here:

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/stories-and-numbers-a-clo_b_62278.html
• http://campobama.blogspot.com/
• http://campobama.blip.tv (video)
• http://campmoveon.blip.tv (video) (a similar format workshop for US group MoveOn.org’s Repower America campaign)

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Where does my registration fee go?

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If there is anything left after the payment of promotion costs, printing materials, venue and catering, it will be donated equally to the Surf Coast Energy Group and the Geelong Sustainability Group.

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Will there be food?

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Yes – we’re going to organise for catering for the weekend so you don’t need to worry about it while you’re focusing on the workshop. There will be vegetarian options available.

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2 days! That’s a lot of time.

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We realise that for busy people two days is a big commitment. However our experience is that this is the amount of time it takes to really start to get our heads around working together to take action effectively, and feedback from previous sessions consistently agree. This is based on dozens of these trainings have been run over the course of the Obama campaign and hopefully the results speak to the importance of this! Check out the draft agenda to see what we’ll be covering.

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We encourage you to come on Friday night if you can.

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Who’s putting this on and why?

We’re collaborating on this as a one-off project and we’re not insisting that anyone who attends becomes part of our organisation’s campaigns, nor are our organisations planning to support the campaigns of those who attend. This is chance to combine knowledge and gather powerful tools for making collective change in our communities!

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More questions? Call Kathryn on 0403 111 436.

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REGISTER at the top of the page.