Starting in Hartford, the Community Learning Project has been working with local community groups, RYASAP, OPP, other nonprofits, the City of Hartford’s Office of Youth Services, Capital Community College and Charter Oak State College in creating a completely new response to the crisis in the supply of highly skilled community organizers and other community change agents. The Connecticut Pipeline Initiative is designed specifically to recruit and develop a new generation of organizers, particularly people of color and others from low-income and working class backgrounds. The market for these skills is substantial: organizers with outstanding skills and broad knowledge are desperately needed by community groups which are involved in service delivery and community development as well as “organizing” groups. They are also needed by other nonprofits and public agencies which are committed to involving youth, parents, or community residents in planning and action projects.
The Pipeline Initiative melds training and education in a unique pattern. It starts with training outside a college setting but offers college credit and the first step up a ladder toward college degrees. Those degree programs are, in turn, designed specifically to provide people with the knowledge and skills they need to become sophisticated organizers and leaders in the struggle for substantial social and community change.
The first step in this educational ladder is the aggressive, targeted recruitment of young people, community leaders, and new staff of local groups for an intensive training program in community organizing. This is being done through community groups and nonprofits and through “spotters” who have been selected because they are particularly good at spotting the kinds of young and community people we want to recruit for the Pipeline Initiative, especially people of color and people with working class and low-income backgrounds.
The people who join the program will receive eleven full days of intense training by experienced organizers. That is more than twice the length of introductory organizing training offered in other parts of the country. It is linked directly to field experience, with field and classroom work reinforcing each other. Young people who take the training and are not currently employed will be paid stipends for 20 hours each week for nine weeks.
Another unique feature -- College credit will be offered by Capital Community College and Charter Oak – a four year state college -- to everyone who completes the training and chooses to take on additional educational assignments to earn credit. These features are obviously particularly important for people with limited incomes who might otherwise not have an opportunity to go to college.
Immediately after that training, 5-10 young adults and community leaders will be offered a one-year paid apprenticeship financed by VISTA. During that year they and others will continue to receive intensive training on the job as well as in workshops and other formalized settings. Their training will broaden to include opportunities to develop skills and knowledge in research, power analysis, team work, issue and leadership development, and understanding the local economy, local and state government, and social trends. They will work on a local campaign as an integral part of their learning. Both colleges are likely to grant college credit for this experiential education, and VISTA will award education grants of $4725 to everyone who completes their year of service.
Both colleges are working with the Community Learning Partnership to develop college degree option programs in Community Change Studies. We are currently working with faculty and college leaders at Capital Community College to refine six existing courses and then to develop additional courses for a new AA degree option in Community Change Studies. That degree will be open to any regular enrollee seeking a two-year Associate’s degree at Capital, as well as to people who have earned college credit outside college walls through our Training and Apprenticeship track.
Those who complete our special programs will start the in-college phase of their education having already completed the equivalent of 4-5 college courses. That plus the VISTA education grant and their likely eligibility for Pell education grants will give them a strong start toward the AA degree in Community Change Studies. It will also make it considerably easier for them to combine completion of their degree with paid work in organizing or other community-serving positions where their new knowledge and experience will be applied and refined.
For those wanting to continue their education beyond an AA, Charter Oak and other state universities will accept all the credits earned through this combination of experiential and classroom education. We will be working with Charter Oak and our other partners to fashion a four year Bachelors in Community Change Studies.
The BA curriculum will build on the AA and offer courses on key social, economic, and public policy issue areas as well as advanced courses in organizing and coalition-building strategies, group dynamics and facilitation, participatory and community research, urban and state policy analysis and reform, and related issues. It will offer opportunities to develop skills ranging from those needed to catalyze collective action and build sustainable organizations, to strategic thinking, research and analysis. The BA program will include courses which enable students to develop in depth knowledge of the particular issue s/he may be addressing (e.g. housing, or jobs and economic development) and an understanding of the institutions, policies, and actors. Integrated into the courses would be exposure to alternative strategies which groups elsewhere have found effective in bringing about positive change on those issues.
The BA program would, of course, provide a base for postgraduate education for those wishing to proceed further. At a later time we hope to work with others in either creating a new MA in Community Change Studies or refining an existing MA program so it fully meets the special educational needs of community organizers and change agents, including the midcareer education needs of experienced organizers who would benefit greatly from peer learning and interaction, an opportunity to deepen their understanding of theory and experience elsewhere, and for in depth study of the issues they are tackling, and the education they need as they take on greater leadership and management responsibilities.
In devising this entire pathway, we are giving long-overdue recognition to a central fact. Community change work requires that people develop both an extraordinarily wide range of practical skills and an increasingly sophisticated mastery of many areas of knowledge. The shortage of people with the skills and breadth of knowledge needed to organize people into effective action on increasingly significant issues is acute. Its effects are often crippling for community groups of all kinds – those which focus on community service delivery and community development as well as community organizing. And it is unrealistic to expect underfunded nonprofits to develop a pipeline of talent for key positions without partnerships with the educational institutions which have far greater access to resources, students, and other assets than nonprofits do.
To respond to the unique educational needs of community organizers and other change agents, community groups, coalitions and other practitioners must play a very strong role in partnering with academic institutions. What is needed is practitioner education, what doctors or lawyers call “clinical education.” That requires involvement of a healthy mix of practitioners and faculty members lest it be either too “academic” or too narrowly focused on mechanics and “hard skills.”
It is essential that steps be taken to ensure that people with great potential to play these vital community change roles have opportunities to:
- learn that they can have careers in community organizing and community change; this vital field of work is currently completely invisible on college campuses; and
- develop the skills and knowledge they need to pursue community change careers, rather than facing the current dilemma - whatever major they choose, it will divert them from learning what they need to know to be effective change agents on the massive social, economic, and political issues facing our nation, including the growing gap between rich and poor, the decline in urban neighborhoods and rural communities, and the weakening of democracy and democratic practice.
The first phase of the new Pipeline Initiative starts in April, 2008 in collaboration with Our Piece of the Pie (OPP) and the Office of Youth Services. Phase 2 begins in July with CLP working in partnership with RYASAP, a statewide nonprofit which will be the Local Lead Partner for the ongoing program, and Americorps VISTA providing stipended volunteer positions. We anticipate that Capital Community College will begin offering its new degree option in Community Change Studies in the fall of 2008.
Chart showing sequence of steps in this educational pathway
For further information contact Andy Mott or Soyun Park at (202) 822-6006, or at andymott@communitylearningproject.org or soyun@communitylearningproject.org
