TRAINING AND SUPPORT FOR PEOPLE IN THE SOCIAL CHANGE MOVEMENT

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An over view and case for taking a coordinated approach
by Katrina Shields & Bobbi Allan

"Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy. Deeds uninformed by educated thought can take false directions. When we go into action and confront our adversaries, we must be armed with knowledge as they. Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents."

- Dr Martin Luther King Jr. From Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community

THE WORKING GROUP - WHO IS IT, AND WHY IT EXISTS

The working group consists of activists and trainers who volunteered at the Adelaide National Environment Movement Training Conference, and others who have since been volunteered. Co-ordinators are Chris Harris, Katrina Shields & Bobbi Allan of the Social Change Training & Resource Centre and Garth Luke. Others who have worked on the Project to date are Kate Brent, James Whelan and Julie Foreman.

The conference was organised because it was recognised that environmental protection work was:

• Often very demanding
  
• Required complex skills and knowledge
  
• Often required people to take on roles in organisations, such as complex management roles, without necessarily having had any training in these skills.
  
• Often subjecting organisations and individuals to considerable stress with burnout being rife.
  
• Leading to a high turnover of activists / workers / volunteers
  
• Leading to a high turnover of activists which caused a loss of valuable skills and experience for the movement
• Not taking advantage of the many very experienced activists/managers/change workers who could pass on the fruits of their experience to others who would benefit.

We believe that there are many benefits to be gained from a more co-ordinated, cross-movement approach to training, and from the possibilities for pooling of the movement's meagre resources for mutual benefit.

WHAT WE MEAN BY TRAINING

"Training" in this paper is a short-hand term for a broad concept that goes beyond (but of course includes) skills development. It includes:

• being sufficiently informed on the relevant campaign issue(s). This is generally the least problematic area for the environment movement. Organisations and individuals are well-motivated to make this a priority and sometimes think this is sufficient to bring about change.
  
  
• practical and technical skills to do the job whether campaigning / managing people and finances / coordinating volunteers / public education, etc. skills required may be: media, public speaking, financial management, computer or research skills etc. This includes sufficient organisational orientation for staff and volunteers to enable them to be effective in their roles.

These practical and technical skills need to be in combination with:

• interpersonal skills, for instance: conflict resolution / negotiation / providing support and supervision / running effective meetings/ team and alliance building. Research by Mary Gnomes on Peace Activists in the USA found the major cause of people dropping out of the movement was not the inevitable campaign losses and setbacks, but unresolved and unsatisfactory relationships with other activists.

This includes the lost opportunities for coordination and cooperation between groups due to poor or underdeveloped relationships. And it includes attracting a keeping a wide range of volunteers. These interpersonal skills are linked to :

• making environmental work sustainable. When we work for environmental sustainability, we should include ourselves and our organisations as part of the environment. Feelings of discouragement, exhaustion and even bitterness are not uncommon among activists who have worked for more than a few years.

Unacceptably high stress levels, unbalanced lives and burnout are common. What is needed is sustainable activism. It is going to take at least our lifetimes to avert the global crises we face and find sustainable ways of living on the earth and with each other. To be involved and stay involved, always moving against the tide of the wider society, requires ways of continually replenishing our inner resources.

Personal and spiritual growth, clarification of ethics and values as well as big picture perspective are important here. The causes of burnout are well-understood and preventable with personal and organisational contributing factors. Prevention includes paying attention to support structures. This appears to be given a low priority by environmental organisations driven by a crisis mentality. It is akin to strip-mining your own resources.

• learning from our own and each others' experience. Reflection and action learning techniques can be used so that critical learning from experience is not lost. In organisations where turnover is high, far too many wheels are re-invented.

It is important to reflect on the assumptions that govern strategies, and to evaluate and adapt what we do for continuous improvement. This requires the ability to step back from the front line and from over-identification with previous actions, so that true reflection and questioning and dialogue can take place. An atmosphere that balances mutual respect and trust with constructive challenging and questioning is important.

This also includes the ability to pause to acknowledge and celebrate successes - even the small ones. It also involves being able to keep a perspective that locates our actions within the much bigger picture of the progression of the environmental movement over the decades.

• organisational development. This includes setting in place evaluation and information sharing systems and structures that: make the flow of work effective and efficient; ensure that valuable knowledge is retained in an accessible way; facilitate the mentoring and development of volunteers / young activists, so that knowledge and skills are shared and there are renewable resources when the old ones 'decline' or are 'used up'!
  
  
• political and philosophical frameworks for action. This includes, for example, developing a sophisticated and preferably shared understanding of non-violence theory, how peoples' movements are effective and how the political processes function. Often this level is assumed to be shared without opportunities for dialogue being created. This is often a source of tension.

A range of training areas are relevant to the environment movement. Central to these are (1) learning to learn from your own and others' experience and (2) being successful in inviting participation from others, that is getting more and more people on board the movement. These are two factors that are critical in developing a broad and successful movement.

To sum up, when we use the term "training" this does not imply simply a transmission from expert to learner. It includes opportunities for dialogue with peer groups, reflection and documentation of learning from experience, and other mechanisms for supporting and resourcing activists. Specific topics of skills require different training strategies.