Summary

People Power and Campaign Skills is our is our in-depth course to help you build an amazing group, plan and run campaigns that make a difference, and bring new people into your movement.

About the training

The training will run over eight weeks on a Wednesday evening and cover essential campaigning and group building skills. It follows a course through a typical campaign cycle, starting with helping your group to work really well, moving on to essential campaign planning skills, looking at how to bring new people into the group and onboard them, before closing by looking at exiting and evaluating the campaign.

Over the eight-week course we’ll look at

• Group culture
• Barriers to participation
• Cultivating leadership
• Avoiding burn out and working in balance
• Understanding power
• Choosing a campaign
• Understanding your target
• Working out tactics
• Messaging a campaign and telling your story
• Escalation strategies
• Marketing your group and building your profile
• Onboarding
• Negotiating, stopping a campaign and evaluating.

The training will be delivered in weekly 90min sessions, with an emphasis on exploring the issues together and with other participants. There will also be some work/reading to do between sessions (not much, we promise!) The reason behind this is so that we have more time in the sessions to practice new skills, think about how it will work within your own local group and learn from each other. Registrations for the course will close on 16th January so we have time to send out workbooks that accompany the sessions.

Because of the nature of the training, it will be far more impactful if attendees are actively working on a campaign or planning to start doing so soon. It would also be wonderful to have two or more people from the group attending together (it’s easier to take training back to the group and embed it when there is more than one person).

Who is this training for?

The training is for anyone in a Friends of the Earth Community Action Group and Activists we work with in Northern Ireland, who is involved in running a campaign, or about to start doing so, and would like to develop their skills further. It’s not suitable for people working alone on campaigns outside a group structure.

Why attend?

Over eight weeks we’ll explore together the key skills and knowledge that will help us to turn our groups into campaigning powerhouses, giving you the chance to build your confidence in campaigning and developing your group. In addition, you’ll get to meet other campaigners from around the country who are on the same journey as you and learn from each other.

The course is structured as follows: Wednesday evening’s 7:30pm – 9:00pm.

1. Getting to know each other – Wednesday 25th Jan

In this shorter introductory session, we’ll spend a little bit of time getting to know each other, showing you how the course will work, and explaining the flow of the sessions. It’s also a chance for you to ask questions and make sure you are ready for the next seven weeks.

2. Building a brilliant campaigning group – Wednesday 1st Feb (part 1)

For healthy and successful campaigning teams, group culture is everything. A good culture makes a group a place where people want to spend their time and contribute to your aims. We’ll look at what barriers to participation exist and how we can mitigate them, and we’ll explore leadership – how to display it and how to cultivate it in others.

3. Building a brilliant campaigning group – Wednesday 8th Feb (part 2)

In our second session on building a groups, we’ll build on the previous session by delving more into group culture, this week looking at different team types and approaches. We’ll look at what can happen when groups go wrong, thinking about how to watch for and avoid burn out, and how to create teams that are healthy and happy, as well as effective.

4. Planning and developing awesome campaigns – Wednesday 15th Feb (part 1)

Now we’ve built a great group, it’s time to think about an awesome campaign. Being able to choose an issue and make it manageable is the first part of this, and we’ll move into analysing a campaign target, and understand what makes them tick. We’ll also dive into power – how it works, who holds it and why we have a lot more than we sometimes think we do.

5. Planning and developing awesome campaigns – Wednesday 22nd Feb (part 2)

Building on last session, it’s time to take our campaign ideas and make them really effective. In this session, we’re going to drill into a whole range of tools, tactics and approaches to make your campaign hit home. We’ll also start to look at messaging – how to communicate your campaign to the public.

6. Find new people for your group and campaign – Wednesday 1st March (part 1)

You’ve got an effective group and your campaign is flying. So how do we turn that success into more people and more power? We’ll spend this session looking at how to build and leverage profile and some basics of marketing your group.

7. Find new people for your group and campaign – Wednesday 8th March (part 2)

How successful you are in ‘onboarding’ new people can determine whether they become active and engaged members of the group, or just drift away after a couple of meetings. First impressions matter, so we’ll show you how you can make a good one and keep new energy flowing into your group.

8. Wrapping up and evaluating your campaign – Wednesday 15th March

There always comes a time to stop a campaign – hopefully because it’s ended in a stunning victory! In this session we’ll look at the best ways to close a campaign, including those times when a campaign just hasn’t worked (it happens!) We also cover how to evaluate and learn from your experiences, so the next one is even better.

When signing up to the training you can either choose to sign up to the whole course or choose the subjects that are of most interest to you and register for those only. Please contact community@foe.co.uk if you would like some guidance on getting tickets for the sessions you want.

Your hosts/facilitators

Fiona Whyte, Rakesh Prashara, Howard Whitehead and Stuart Melvin.

Accessibility

During this webinar we will use PowerPoint and breakout rooms, Jamboards and zoom Please let us know via the booking form if you have any accessibility requirements and if booking the session is difficult for you get in touch with us on community@foe.co.uk for help.

Recording

We won’t be recording the sessions as they will involve a lot of breakout rooms and group work.