Strategic Questioning Manual: A Powerful Tool for Personal and Social Change
Strategic questioning is a powerful tool for social change which helps people discover their own strategies and ideas for change.
Format
Tips
Being Purpose Driven
Nothing precedes purpose. The starting point for every organisation or movement should be the question ‘Why do we exist’? A number of tips for focusing an organisation on vision and purpose. An excerpt from Purpose Driven Campaigning, based on Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church.
Levels of Commitment from Community to Core
Rick Warren focuses on five ‘circles of commitment’ – community, crowd, congregation, committed and core, and argue that it’s important to recognise where your supporters fall in these categories, and develop processes to move them from the outside in. An excerpt from Purpose Driven Campaigning.
A Beginners Guide to a Blockade Camp
Many successful campaigns have based their direct action from blockade camps and include the wins against the damming of the Franklin river, stopping the Jabiluka uranium mine, and the proposed gas hub at Walmadan/James Price Point. It can be a scary thing, heading to a blockade camp for the first time. Here are some tips to get you started.
Live tweeting at rallies and marches
Twitter is a very useful way to share your story outside traditional networks. Increasingly Twitter quotes and photos are used to embed in traditional media, and with a small amount of effort you can get your event trending. This will alert politicians and media to your issue.
Facilitation at the Frontlines
This article includes reflections and tips for ‘extreme sport’ facilitation at blockades and action camps. Includes notes about logistics, comfort of participants, timing, internal organisation within the facilitation team, holding the space, and being transparent about role and power dynamics.
The Basics of Crowdfunding and how to use Pozible
Rick Chen, cofounder of Pozible, came along to a Melbourne Campaigner’s Network session to introduce the basics of crowd-funding and how to use the Pozible platform. Read on for some tips on how to get your crowd-funder up and running!
Preparing for a Community Blockade
Here are some practical things you may like to consider in logistical preparations for a community blockade: helpful skills, action roles, and logistical preparation.
Principles of Co-operative Conflict Resolution
Navigating conflict is a core activist skill. These tips from peacebuilding have the potential to depolarise and de-escalate tense and challenging situations. This is an excerpt from the Nonviolent Community Safety and Peacebuilding Trainers’ Manual which is also available for download on the Commons.
Activist Support and Debriefing
Activists need to individually and collectively deal with feelings such as loss, grief, frustration, anger and despair. We can set up our groups to provide support to each other including emotional support, support for action, and educational support.
Stress Management and Burnout Prevention
Physical, emotional & spiritual renewal is crucial to looking after ourselves for the long haul. Tips on how activists can manage high stress.Â
De-escalate, Manage and Transform Conflict
Many conflicts get worse than they actually need to be because the participants lose control of themselves and retreat into self-reinforcing patterns of attack and counterattack. Here are some suggestions, drawn from the literature of conflict resolution and psychotherapy, that can be used to de-escalate conflicts.
Giving and Receiving Feedback
‘Feedback’ is a communication to a person or a group which gives that person information about how they affect others. It is important to be able to give feedback in such a way that people can hear it, take it in, evaluate it, and change behaviour which affects their relationship with others.
Empowered Fundraising
Anne O’Brien interviewed John Croft, developer of the Dragon Dreaming project model. John’s ‘Empowered Fundraising’ approach challenges groups to take their projects seriously and invite others to contribute funds, as a way to further their own social change values and make a difference in the world.
Tips for Fundraising
We’ve gathered together tips on building a donor base, running successful crowdfunding campaigns, and where to access more resources on effective fundraising for social justice causes.
Art and Campaigning: Lessons about the Effective Use of Art in Campaigns
Lessons about the effective use of art in campaigns from three activist artists: Tom Civil, Arlene TextaQueen and Van Thanh Rudd.
Facilitation at Occupy Melbourne
Insights about facilitation from the very challenging General Assembly process at Occupy Melbourne. This article will be of interest to facilitators and others learning about group process, as well as people keen to find out about the Occupy movement. These reflections were written two weeks after Occupy Melbourne kicked off in October 2011.Â
Tips for New Activists
What it takes for people to get active, what leads to people dropping out of activism, & what we should think about when engaging new activists.
Co-work Spaces for Non-profits
Are you lonely and need somewhere other than your living room to work on your start up non-profit? Looking to hire staff in another city and need somewhere to put them? The Australian Progress crowd-sourced register of co-work spaces across Australia has your needs covered.
Checklist for a great facilitator
Facilitators help a group to get where it needs to go, whether the focus of a gathering is information sharing, discussion, generating creative options, making decisions, team building or planning for action. Here are some tips and tricks for facilitation, to help you get the most out of your next meeting.