Training Schedule

The Midwest Academy has 10 great trainings scheduled throughout 2012! Whether you are new to organizing or a seasoned veteran, we have a training that will get you to the next level:

Organizing for Social Change: Learn how to build power, recruit and develop leaders, think strategically, win issue campaigns and develop strong organizations:

• March 26 – 30, 2012: Chicago, IL
• May 7 – 11: Sierra Madre, CA
• August 13 – 17: Chicago, IL
• September 10 – 14: Metairie, LA
• November 12 – 16: Baltimore, MD

Advanced Organizing for Social Change: Spend three days with the Academy’s most experienced trainers applying the Midwest Academy strategy chart to your organization’s campaign. You’ll leave with a plan that’s targeted, strategic, and effective:

• March 21 – 23: Washington, DC
• June 11 – 13: New York, NY

Supervising Organizers Workshop: Step back from meetings on the run, in order to evaluate yourself as a supervisor, explore new skills, and develop a plan to boost the skills and effectiveness of your entire team:

• April 18 – 20: New York, NY
• July 11 – 13: Berkeley, CA
• November 28 – 30, Chicago, IL

Click here for more information about each of our training sessions. Register today or let us know if you have any questions at training@midwestacademy.com.

Photo Contest

If these trainings look great and you’re wondering how to send staff members, enter our Photo Contest! It’s quick and easy. Just send us a great picture of an action that your organization coordinated in the last year and you’ll be entered to win a scholarship for the training sessions of your choice. Photos will be judged by a panel of progressive leaders.

• 1st place: Three $500 scholarships
• 2nd place: Two $500 scholarships
• 3rd place: One $500 scholarship

Scholarships will be awarded to representatives from your organization to attend the trainings of your choice!

To submit your entry, send your picture, with a caption of at least 100 words, to contest@midwestacademy.com by February 29, 2012.

Time: 6:00pm-8:00pm
Location:  YWCA Boston Kuumba Library (140 Claredon St., Boston, MA)

Join other community leaders in a facilitated discussion on race, ethnicity, and leadership in Boston. YWCA Boston Community Dialogues and LeadBoston programs are co-hosting this will four-part series comprised of a diverse mix of community members. Attend to learn from one anothers’ experiences and develop next steps for personal and community change. Bring your voice to this important conversation!

To register, email dialogues@ywca.boston.org or click here.

Location: SEIU 615, 2nd Floor (26 West Street, Boston, MA 02111) MAP

The world is full of complicated issues that impact our lives, especially during tough economic times – critical issues like affordable housing, neighborhood crime, youth development, and health care. Too often, potential community activists experience the problems within their own communities, but are unaware of their power to create solutions to those problems.

Organizing for Change helped leaders, board members, and staff of community-based groups strengthen their own internal capacity to advocate for change in their community. Featured presenters Mel King and Lew Finfer shared their deep knowledge and experience in educating, organizing, and mobilizing neighborhoods and communities into action.

This training helped participants to:

• Understand how to seize an opportunity to organize a constituency around a common problem and solution;

• Identify allies, build coalition, and communicate effectively about your solution for a winning campaign;

• Learn from veteran organizers Lew Finfer and Mel King, who have stories to tell and lessons to share.

This Organizing for Change program was a condensed public session, provided as a “Sampling” of a more in-depth Intensive Leadership Program offered by the Academy. Sponsoring organizations are Massachusetts Policy and Organizing Leadership Academy and Mel King Institute for Community Building.

Speaker Spotlight:

Mel King is a legendary community organizer in greater Boston and a special guest at the Academy’s first Organizing for Change training seminar. Sharing his “maximum feasible participation” coalition model, he’ll tell the story of a successful community campaign to stop the highway – I-95 – from going through neighborhoods in Cambridge, Somerville and Boston and how that coalition momentum helped create a network of Community Development Corporations across the state. For over 50 years, King has been an activist and community leader in Boston, and he is the founder and current director of the South End Technology Center. He’s a former Massachusetts State Representative, founder of the Mel King Institute, and a committed voice for justice and opportunity.

Lew Finfer is a celebrated organizing leader across the state and co-founder of the Academy. He’ll describe how, using King’s coalition model, he’s helped change policy at both the public and private institutional levels in parallel. Lew’s coalitions,for example, have persuaded private industry to provide jobs to young people and simultaneously secured funding for the youth jobs initiative from the state Legislature.

Finfer has worked as a community organizer since 1970 and is the director of the Massachusetts Communities Action Network (MCAN). He’s led neighborhood improvement campaigns in Dorchester and Somerville, is a vocal housing advocate, and a beloved community-builder across the state.

This workshop enabled participants to become aware of and familiarize themselves with critical elements to become effective community educators: fostering open dialogues with and among participants, promoting critical thinking and creativity, and developing an environment of safety and freedom. Participants had the opportunity to discuss and understand the social role of education and its importance to promoting social change.

The workshop provided an overview of how adults learn by practicing all phases of the learning cycle (definition, validation, assimilation, integration, and transition), applying 12 important pinciples for effective learning, and sharing personal experiences.

Course Objectives:

• Participants will understand the fundamentals of popular education: the learning cycle, principles of effective learning, ideas-feelings-actions;
• learn, review and practice principles for effective learning; and  
• understand the importance of following the seven steps of lesson planning

Participant Quotes:

• “I enjoyed the range, resources, and positive attitude!”
• “I learned lots of new activities I will use with my youth. It was wonderful to learn about community organizing and popular education.”
• “I will now be a more effective teacher.”

Course Materials:

• Agenda
• Suggested Reading
• The Twelve Principles of Adult Learning
• The Land of Chips Interactive
• How Much We Have in Common Interactive

        

Date: November 13, 2011
Time: 9:00am-4:00pm
Location: Blackman Auditorium, Northeastern University

“The purpose of the Teach In is to educate and enlighten others about the state of the economy, its impact on individuals and households, the reasons for the long duration of the current Great Recession, and to provide ideas about what can be done to speed economic recovery and enhance economic and social justice.

Inspired by the Occupy Boston movement, the Teach In is intended for community members of all ages and walks of life.

The Teach In is being planned by a growing group — initially made up of Northeastern faculty and students — along with partners from the community and other campuses. Faculty and student speakers are being invited from a number of universities and colleges around Boston.  Speakers will also include political, civic, community, business and labor leaders.

You are invited to come for the entire day or for portions of it if you cannot stay for the entire day. In addition, we will be live streaming the event.”

Agenda:

9:00 – 10:30 The economy: where are we now?
10:45 – 12:15 Who’s the system failing? Who’s it working for?
12:30 – 2:00 Politics and economics: what went wrong?
2:15 – 3:45 What can be done? Reclaiming our economy and our democracy.
3:45 – 4:00 Wrap-up

If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact:

Phone: (617) 373-7870
Email: neuteachin@gmail.com

Time: 9:30am-4:30pm, 9:00am registration, breakfast, and networking
Location: Julia Martin House (90 Bickford Street, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130) MAP
Instructor: James Johnson, Sun Consulting
Registration Deadline: February 2, 2012

“I loved that the facilitator engaged everyone to participate and kept the energy in the room from start to finish. This was a very interactive workshop!”
-Building Leaders, Building Communities participant, Dec. 2010

This course will cover the core skills needed for resident-volunteer leaders to make change in their communities. Participants will examine methods for designing a resident leadership training course with multiple modules, discuss varying ways to teach foundational leadership skills to residents, assess methods for pre and post training evaluation models, and practice facilitation methods to effectively deliver a useful learning session.

Registration Information: (price includes refreshments, lunch, and materials)
MACDC Members: $50
Non-MACDC Members: $100
Student/Intern/AmeriCorps: $25

To pay by check, please contact Julie at melkinginstitute@macdc.org

Date: October 19, 2011
Time: 7:00pm-9:00pm
Location: Hibernian Hall (184 Dudley Street, Roxbury, MA)

Please join to share and hear stories from Roxbury residents who remember or were part of the 1960’s community activism that fought urban renewal, stopped the I-95 highway, helped found Madison Park Development Corporation, and Saved the Community!

You are invited to share your memories at the event, which will include recollections from: Marjorie Hicks, Representative Byron Rushing, Sarah Ann Shaw, Joyce Stanley and others.

Participants are encouraged to bring to the event photos, news clippings, written memories, artifacts, flyers, documents, or other mementos to be included in MPDC’s 45th Anniversary Time Capsule, which will be incorporated into the cornerstone of the next building.

Coffee and dessert will be served.

Event is free and open to all. Please spread the word and RSVP to Kay at 617.849.6355 or kmathew@madison-park.org.

Date: October 10, 2011
Time: 11:00am-12:00pm

You are invited to join the Leadership Learning Community and register for the seventh in their  2011 monthly webinar series. They continue to work with thought leaders in the field to produce this series of free webinars that focus on promoting more inclusive, networked and collective leadership approaches. This year’s topics range from collective leadership to collaborative technologies, leadership coaching, and more! 

We have so many online tools at our disposal to theoretically connect and activate engagement with others. But what happens when we say “we’re building an online community” but few engage? When is it worth the work and effort? What are our options? And if we build it, what are some starting points to help us work towards successful engagement? Join us as we explore our options and practices with Nancy White of Full Circle Associates. Nancy has been engaging in and facilitating online groups since 1996 – with her fair share of successes and failures.

To register, please click here.

For more information, contact:

Leadership Learning Community
1203 Preservation Park Way Suite 200
Oakland, California 94612
www.leadershiplearning.org
info@leadershiplearning.org

Date: September 27-December 13, 2011

Union of Minority Neighborhoods invites you to the Institute for Neighborhood Leadership workshops series for activists of color. Please register below for these exciting workshops that begin September 27 and go through December 13.

Planned sessions include: 

• Sept. 27 – Special events- make them work!
• Oct. 4 – An introduction to organizing
• Oct. 11 – How to build an organization
• Oct. 25 – Understand how to raise non-grant funds
• Nov. 1 – Introduction to grant writing
• Nov. 8 – Strategies and tactics in organizing, to win
• Nov. 15 – Volunteers
• Nov. 22 – Advocating for power
• Nov. 29 – What do funders want from you
• Dec. 6 – Designing an organizing campaign
• Dec. 13 – Boards of directors

Workshop presenters include Denise Lau, Michael J.Brown, Miriam Messinger, Sue Karant, Horace Small, Wendy Swart Grossman, George Luse, Judy Freiwirth, Catherine Joseph & Jude Goldman.

Attend as many as you wish. A small donation will be taken at the door to cover printing.

Please click here to RSVP and register for those you will be attending.

Please contact Horace Small at horacesmall@umnunity.org, 617.522.3349×1 if you  have any questions about the event or how to register.

Date: December 8, 2011
Time: 9:30am-4:00pm
Location: 122 Dewitt Community Room (122 Dewitt Drive, Roxbury, MA 02119)
Instructor: Heang Ly, Teen Empowerment

“Great workshop, I learned so many great interactive activities!”
“This will allow me to think about the dynamics/barriers within a group before making a meeting.”
“My coworkers and I are planning to facilitate a monthly meeting soon, we will definitely consider these techniques!”
            -Training participants

This workshop demonstrated the depth and richness of several interactive exercises, and their ability to increase positive participation, create and maintain relationships, and discuss challenging topics – all while engaging the hearts, minds, and energies of participants. Team leaders and group facilitators learned techniques to make meetings, seminars and workshops more dynamic and constructive. The training was conducted using entirely interactive methods, with learning taking place through the direct experience of various interactive activities.

• Morning Session: Interactive Techniques to Jump Start Your Group
• Afternoon Session: Designing and Facilitating Engaging Meetings

This session was led by Heang Ly, Director of Consulting and Training at Teen Empowerment. Heang has extensive background in group facilitation, youth development and community organizing.

For more information on interactives to jump-start your meetings, look at the Teen Empowerment website and the Moving Beyond Icebreakers manual!