Balance or Burnout?
A useful model for understanding activist burnout and how to avoid it from the Transitions Towns movement. Includes a downloadable worksheet with prompts for reflection.
Tag
Resilience
Book Review of In the Tiger’s Mouth Empowerment Guide
A review of Katrina Shield’s ‘In The Tiger’s Mouth: An Empowerment Guide for Social Action’. What most distinguishes this books is its emphasis on three elements not often considered in other campaigning texts: self-awareness, collaboration, and self-care.
Maintaining Group Morale and Motivation
Group morale is a key contributor to the success of a group, increasing cohesion, reducing burnout and preventing activist turnover. Build team relationships; resolve conflicts and improve communication; and celebrate success.
Group Strategies to Prevent Stress and Burnout
A group’s culture can have a big impact on the likelihood of stress and burnout for members and staff. It’s possible to create a group culture that supports self-care, balance and sustainable work loads and patterns.
Stress Management and Burnout Prevention
High stress levels and burnout are very common among grassroots activists and community workers. Stress management and physical, emotional and spiritual renewal is crucial to looking after ourselves for the long haul.
Consciousness Raising
Consciousness raising was a key element of the second wave women’s movement enabling women to recognise that the personal is political. This article gives an overview of group consciousness raising processes relevant for any group based on a shared identity or experience of oppression.
Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit: Book Review
Hope in the Dark was written by Rebecca Solnit to help activists and campaigners find hope in times of struggle. Here Matt Ross reviews the American author’s arguments for keeping the faith in times of despair.
Our Hearts in Transition: Book Review
A book review of The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins with emphasis on its insights around the emotional & psychological impact of climate change.
Personal ‘traps’ that contribute to activist burnout
This article explores some of the ‘cognitive errors’ or ‘traps’ that contribute to activist burnout. Read through this list and see if you might need to adjust your perspective, in the interests of your health, wellbeing and effectiveness.
Surviving the ups and downs: Part 2
In the second part of this article Mark and Paul Engler further explore Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan and its implications for social movements.
Surviving the ups and downs of social movements
We tend to talk about activist burnout as an individualised experience – but the Movement Action Plan, a framework for understanding social movements, factors in perception of failure, providing insights and hope for navigating the downs in movement life.
Home Care in Hungary
In Hungary, digital campaigning organisation aHang has been winning big and building people power in a difficult political environment. Their homecare campaign was a huge win for Hungarian carers, and people power everywhere.
Celebration is an Activist Skill
Activists are often so focused on problems – it’s important to take in wins, whether big or small, to sustain us through the struggle. This article includes reminders of what we can celebrate, how, and why it is so important.