Milestones: A curriculum in social change

A commitment to the craft

For more than 40 years, each August a group of recent college graduates and others have stepped into a classroom, a hotel conference room, or a Zoom call, with only a vague idea of what it means to organize for social change.

A week or two later, they leave those real or virtual rooms with an introduction to the building blocks of running and winning grassroots campaigns. And in the process, they’ve also met people who have been practicing and mastering these skills and strategies for years.

That, in a nutshell, is what has become known within The Public Interest Network as Social Change 100. And it’s only one “course” in a much larger curriculum designed to provide aspiring changemakers with the theory, skills and practice they need to master their craft.

Sitting in a room or in front of a screen as an expert organizer or advocate lectures is just one part of The Public Interest Network training experience. It also includes:

Introducing students to activism

Over 50 years, the Student PIRGs have trained more than 2 million college students in the skills of effective civic action. PIRG campus organizers have taught students to investigate social problems, research and write reports, earn media attention, lobby public officials and other decision-makers, and wage grassroots action campaigns.

Running a canvass 

Among the most valuable training experiences for PIRG and Public Interest Network staff is learning how to run a citizen outreach canvass office. In the classroom and in the field, entry-level staff learn how to recruit and manage other staff, raise money, manage an office, and mobilize grassroots action and support for a campaign – all invaluable skills in the nonprofit world.

Especially during the summer, when college students are on break, the work is intense, the hours are long, and the task list never-ending. Yet the people who have succeeded at running a canvass earn a self-confidence that few other experiences provide. If you’ve built and managed a team that can go out day after day after day to knock on doors in any weather for a cause and a campaign worth fighting for, you can do almost anything.

Green Corps

Founded in 1992, Green Corps is a one-year training program for aspiring environmental organizers. The program combines intensive classroom training with in-the-field experience on real environmental campaigns with partner groups – all of which prepare Green Corps graduates for placement in organizing positions in the environmental and public interest movements.

More than 400 organizers have taken part in the Green Corps program. Nearly all are still at work for the environment or the public interest.

Community Action Works

While most network training is designed for staff and college students, for 35 years Community Action Works has been training people in the community to tackle local environmental problems. Founded in 1987, the project grew out of a MASSPIRG-led ballot initiative campaign to clean  up hazardous waste dumpsites across Massachusetts.

In addition to holding annual conferences for local environmental activists across New England, the training provided by Community Action Works has helped local activists win hundreds of other local victories, including shutting down a coal-fired power plant in Holyoke, Mass.; cleaning up contamination around a school in Hamden, Conn.; and blocking the use of pesticides in Vermont’s Lake Iroquois.

Training never stops

All staff in their first year with the network attend a series of trainings, starting with Social Change 100. Staff in the second year and above may attend shorter sessions, running as long as a few hours to a few days, focusing on a single issue or skill set, from global warming to consumer protection, from running corporate campaigns to working with the media.

And every day network staff give each other feedback on how to improve our work. As Janet Domenitz told Faye Park decades ago, we strive to stay focused on doing the work better today than we did yesterday.