Training for Change. George Lakey, director; Daniel Hunter, program director. Helping groups stand up for justice, peace, and the environment through strategic non-violence.

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Glossary of
direct education
terminology
sociogram: an exercise in which participants arrange their bodies to show something about themselves or to stimulate a new awareness. For example, participants are asked to range themselves along a line that shows how long they've been active with a particular cause. See also "spectrum."
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Training for Change was founded on Martin Luther King's birthday in 1992, a carefully chosen birthday for a group that spreads the skills of democratic, nonviolent social change.

Since then we've led hundreds of workshops for nonviolent activists around the world with our unique direct education approach.

Read more about our
direct education approach.
They've included crowd control workshops for Mohawks, strategic planning retreats for Greenpeace, civil disobedience workshops for nursing-home workers, strike trainings for steelworkers and civil disobedience classes for ACT-UP.

Activists come from all over the world to take our trainings -- a recent month-long intensive had organizers from Russia, Ghana, Croatia, Burma, Germany and Israel learning side by side! But we go to them, too; in the last two years, our trainers have led workshops in Russia, Thailand, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Australia, and Canada.

[map]
Training for Change has led over 600 workshops in over 17 countries for over 12,000 participants.
Our clients have included the United Mine Workers of America, Greenpeace U.S.A., ACT-UP, Swarthmore College, United Farm Workers, Women's Prison Association, Archdiocese of Pennsylvania, Affordable Housing Action Association of Ontario, Pennsylvania Service Corps,
[parallel lines]
Preparing to do direct action with an experiential roleplay.
National Coalition Against the Misuse of Pesticides (NCAMP), Friends World Committee, Southeastern Pennsylvania Mental Health Association, University of Massachusetts, Shalom Center, Integrity, International Liaison for Volunteers in Mission, 20/20 Vision, Bucknell University, Philadelphia School System, and the International Network of Engaged Buddhists (Thailand).

Experiential learning is the hallmark of our trainings. We believe that trainees are able to apply more of the information if they learn it in active rather than passive ways. We find that trainees can usually find the answers they need in their own experience; as we see it, the trainer's job is to create designs which empower the trainees to see for themselves what to do next.

[training steelworkers]
George Lakey doing strike training with United Steelworkers of America.
We work with an incredible variety of people, from rural coal miners, to urban ACT-UP-ers, to Buddhist monks in the farthest reaches of Cambodia. Some examples of our diverse client base: We trained the United Mineworkers field staff in preparation for the successful Pittston Coal Strike (1989-90), as well as the Duquesne, Pennsylvania, local of the United Steelworkers in their campaign to save their steel mill. We've also led workshops for farm workers in Michigan, residents of a low income neighborhood group in the Bronx, and leaders of the African American community in north Philadelphia. We've done conflict resolution workshops for maximum-security prisoners, as well as led group dynamics trainings for the Haymarket Fund's wealthiest donors and board members.

[trust walk]
Thai activists doing a closed-eye "trust walk" in one of our workshops.
We adapt our trainings to the local culture. In 1991, we were doing peacekeeper training with the Mohawk Nation near Montreal, Canada. The role-playing wasn't working, and the Mohawks let us know why: it was in conflict with their tradition. So we changed the design on the spot. In the new approach, Canadians of European descent presented skits -- skits which the Mohawks were encouraged to interrupt in order to evoke Mohawk solutions. It worked!

Students and young adults are frequent clients; examples are Public Allies, a national youth service organization; Empty the Shelters, a national housing advocacy group run by students; and the Philadelphia Student Union, a youth-led group that offers trainings to inner-city high school students. Leadership development workshops for students and young people include trainings for the University of Pennsylvania, University of Massachusetts, Swarthmore and Mt. Holyoke Colleges, and the Pennsylvania Service Corps.




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[Sword That Heals]
THE SWORD THAT HEALS
By George Lakey

When state-sponsored violence meets nonviolent people power, which one wins? As George Lakey shows in this passionate and well researched piece, it's nonviolence that tends to win hands down. Originally written as a rebuttal to the Ward Churchill screed "Pacifism as Pathology," this booklet is filled with recent real-world examples of nonviolent victories.

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You can also send a check to: Training for Change
3241 Columbus Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55407
 


 
Training for Change     3241 Columbus Avenue, South Minneapolis, MN 55407 USA     peacelearn@igc.org     ph:612-827-7323