People who are leading community organizing and community development efforts throughout the world are tackling enormous issues which require sophistication and great skill. They are addressing some of the central issues of our time -- poverty, exclusion and rights, social and community change and revitalizing democracy. To have a substantial impact they must learn how to build powerful, highly effective organizations through which large numbers of now powerless people can participate in seeking significant community change and development against great obstacles. This requires that they develop broad-ranging knowledge, skills and strategies, including the capacity to organize people, develop leaders, and create strong organizations and movements. They must also develop a highly sophisticated understanding of the trends and forces which shape their environment and of alternative strategies for dealing with the central issues their nations face.
Most community change agents learn as they go, through trial and error. They have few, if any, opportunities for intensive training or academic education designed to help them learn how to organize and gain the major changes which are needed to reduce poverty and discrimination. Unfortunately, it has been very difficult for nonprofits throughout the world to find sufficient funds to support extensive training for community organizers and social change leaders.
In recent years, people in several countries have pioneered the development of university-based programs which are designed specifically to provide community change agents with a combination of classroom, peer learning and experiential education which enables them to increase their effectiveness and impact. Many of these programs have been created by faculty members with deep links to grassroots groups and movements; others have involved organizers and community leaders in their initiation and design.
With different origins, anchored in different disciplines, these programs vary greatly. They range from a two-year community college degree in Community Economic Development in South Central Los Angeles to a small new university which has emerged out of grassroots rural development work in rural Uganda. They include a course in community organizing at Harvard's Kennedy School and midcareer Masters and PhD programs in Rural Development in Mexico. All are designed to equip front-line practitioners with the intellectual knowledge, practical skills, broad perspective and learning practices they need to lead change efforts in different parts of the world.
These creative educational programs suffer greatly from isolation. Their leaders have no natural networks for meeting with others who wrestle with the same issues elsewhere. This cuts them off from important sources of ideas, experience, stimulation, and peer support. It also hampers the spread of best practices and the replication of good programs. And it blocks the development of collaborative efforts to build this emerging field of study so it becomes a growing source of talent and support for the grassroots community and social change efforts which people throughout the world so sorely need.
With funding from the Ford Foundation, the International Working Group on University Education for Community Change is bringing together 18-20 educators and community and social change leaders from different parts of the world to work on these issues. Its members are coming together in small and larger meetings.
- First, this gives them opportunities to overcome their isolation and, building on two prior meetings, to learn from each other, strengthen their practice, and develop a book and other publications for broad dissemination to others struggling with the same issues.
- Second, they are planning creation of an ongoing international network through which growing numbers of people and institutions can learn and collaborate regionally and globally. They will work together to strengthen, enrich, and gain recognition and expanded support for this important new area of studies.
This network's goal is to strengthen and greatly expand the number of educational programs which meet the education, training and support needs of community organizers, community developers, and social and community change leaders throughout the globe.
