Intensive Weeklong Training

Organizing & Leadership Training

Ayni Institute is an organization which supports social movements, leaders, and institutions in increasing their strategic and organizational capacity.

The purpose of this training is to support new and mid-level organizers to gain the necessary skills to be successful in their first and subsequent cycles of organizing campaigns.

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Objectives

With this training we hope to accomplish the following outcomes:

  1. To set a standard for leadership and organizing
  2. To get participants to understand the definitions of leadership, the core theory of community organizing and its relationship to social movements
  3. To provide concrete practical skills that will support new organizers in their first year
  4. To provide a process of leadership development that mid-level organizers can replicate to support younger organizers
  5. To review and replenish energies for mid-level organizers (those with 3-5 years of organizing experience)

Agenda for the Training:

Day 1: Leadership & Change

- The Foundations of Leadership
- Discovering your values in order to organize with them
- Leadership Maturity: Cycles & Stages.

Day 2: Institutional Change & Community Organizing

- Introduction to Change:
Internal (Culture) & External (Institutional change)
- Core Theory of Community Organizing
- Community Organizing and Social Movements

Day 3: Relational Skills

- Public Narrative: The Power of Telling Your Story
- Relationships & Values: 1-to-1s
- Proposition & The Search: How and where to find leaders?

Day 4: Campaign Skills

- Developing & Running Campaigns: Creating a Ladder of Engagement
- Campaign Story & Communications
- Coordination & Follow up

Day 5: Recruitment & Growth Skills

- The Stadium Pitch: Recruiting other people into your campaign
- House & Group Meetings
- Facilitating Good Meetings

Day 6: Personal Leadership Skills

- Time Management
- Understanding our Cycle of Leadership (Preventing Burnout)
- Life & Work Balance
- Closing Session & Training Debrief

Key Details

Training Format:

Participants will be in small groups as well as in large plenary sessions. Sessions will run from 9-6pm everyday and participants will be expected to do a group assignment that will take 90 min after the end of each day. Participants will go through an internal process of reflecting about their own leadership choices and capacities, as well as conceptual processes of understanding the basic assumptions and propositions of the tradition of community organizing. After those processes have been established, we will proceed towards developing practical skills that will support participants in their current organizing campaigns.

Criteria for Participation:

Ayni has important criteria for this training. Participants are expected to already be in an organizing position (part-time or full-time) in their organizations. We encourage people to come in groups with their lead organizer to develop proper apprenticeship support. We expect participants to be interested in engaging and building organizing projects, and that they are interested in developing their leadership.

Logistics:

The training will take place at 2 Chelsea St. in East Boston, MA (near Maverick Square). It will start on Monday, October 1st and end on Saturday, October 6th. We will be starting at 9am, so please plan to arrive at least 15 mins. beforehand. Light refreshments and breakfast will be served. The training will not cover food or lodging.

Cost:

We want to support all kinds of people to attend this training regardless of their financial need. This training is only for people that are already in organizing organizations.

We have a pay scale depending on the budget size of the organization:

$300 Discounted Rate For Volunteer & Small-sized organizations (under 200k yearly budget)
$600 Mid-Size Rate For Mid-sized Organizations (under 500k yearly budget)
$1000 Large-Size Rate For Large Organizations (Over 1m per year budget or organizations sponsored by philanthropic institutions)
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