Last month, the Sierra Club helped lead the 10 day opening session of the second annual Community Organising Fellowship, an event where we worked to train 23 organizers and campaigners from across Australia on the theory, tools, and practical skills that will strengthen their work to stop destructive coal and gas projects and promote a clean energy future.
These skills included developing personal narratives, recruitment, effective teams, leadership development, and refining strategic campaign plans. The Fellowship is a six month program to train “organisers who can mobilise Australians around shared values, influence the political process and engage the volunteer constituency to win campaigns.”
Perhaps those best able to discuss the impact of the Fellowship are the people who went through the training. Here’s a few testimonials:
The Fellowship has increased both my skills in community organising and my confidence in sharing these skills with others. The immersive workshop format has provided precious space for face-to-face learning, sharing ideas with facilitators and other delegates, and building strong relationships with current and future collaborators in the climate movement. I am confident that our entire cohort will go on to empower others in our communities, and that we’ll continue to support each other in this work. The Fellowship will be instrumental in helping us build a broad, diverse and powerful movement.
I’ve met 22 of the most diverse, interesting organisers and campaigners in the country, and been trained by more than a dozen experts on everything from critical pathways, to the history of the environment movement in Australia, to NationBuilder best practice. I can’t recommend this program highly enough.
The fellowship has equipped me with a deeper understanding of what community organising is, and how it can best be applied. Through my learnings I have been challenged to move from tactics-based campaigning to more strategic, long-term campaigning. I understand better where my campaign and my community fit into the incredible tapestry that is the environment and climate movement in Australia.
The Sierra Club’s involvement goes all the way back to 2012 when Australian activist Victoria McKenzie traveled to the U.S. to observe coal fights against mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia and exports in the Pacific Northwest. After witnessing the success of the Sierra Club model and the Beyond Coal Campaign, McKenzie discussed the experience with her colleagues back home. The Club was then invited to come to Australia and share our training with a larger group of coal fighters.
In May 2013, the Sierra Club conducted a three day organizing workshop outside of Newcastle, home to the world’s largest coal export terminal. We were blown away by the creativity and passion of our Australian colleagues. While campaigns like Lock the Gate go door to door to educate people on the dangers of unconventional gas and take votes to stop companies from drilling on their land, a coalition of Traditional Owners, rangers, and environmentalists are leading a blockade of the Maules Creek coal mine in an effort to protect the Leard State Forest. As a result, activists are successfully convincing major banks to reject coal export proposals that endanger the Great Barrier Reef.
The success of this training, followed by the first annual Our Land, Our Water, Our Future conference, helped kick start the launch of the Community Organizing Fellowship by the Change Agency and the Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales. The Sierra Club sent a delegation of seven volunteers and staff to help lead the first session in February 2015. But as the Fellowship trains more and more organizers, the role of outside facilitators diminishes. This year we sent a team of two trainers and as many sessions were led by graduates of the 2014 cohort, who used learnings from their own campaigns in Australia to enrich the curriculum and build the movement.
The Community Organising Fellowship has been intentional from the beginning in its attempt to create a safe space for Aboriginal activists within the movement and explore how the varied parts of Australian society -- from ranchers to urbanites to Traditional Owners to more recent arrivals -- can find shared values. With an emphasis on relational meetings and moving from transactional relationships to genuine partnerships built on shared values, the Fellowship is opening up new opportunities to build an inclusive movement for the future.
The Fellowship is truly building something special and uniquely Australian, and I cannot wait to see what this new group of organizers does next.