Announcing the first TFC Newsletter! This newsletter updates Summer 2009 and representative of the excitement we feel for providing more activist resources for you -- the trainers, facilitators and educators in the TFC network.

Since 1992, Training for Change (TFC) has honed and shared its cross-cultural education methods with activists and educators the world over. It has facilitated custom-designed experiential workshops in some 20 countries, on every continent. The core of Training for Change's international mission is to provide the best training of trainers methodology to build local training capacity, free from outside dependency. The TFC approach is to support and challenge activists and trainers to step fully into their power, so they can carry and share the skills they learn, on their own.

Listen to Training Elder Betsy Raasch-Gilman interviewed on the topic of Martin Luther King & nonviolence -- and how it relates to current struggles and problems

Just before Martin Luther King, Jr., Day in January07, TFC was contacted by the public radio show "Weekend America," looking for contemporary nonviolent activists to be interviewed about MLK's legacy for today. The interview was broadcast as part of their annual MLK show. The brief interview includes clips from Dr. King's speeches, with comments from TFC trainers Nico Amador, Matt Guynn, Daniel Hunter, and George Lakey.

At the end of December,06, George Lakey carried out TFC's four-year strategic plan and retired as its founding executive director. His report on the fifteen years of his leadership is on this website.

Advocate for Nonviolent Social Change to Serve as Visiting Professor

George Lakey, the head of a Philadelphia-based organization internationally known for its leadership in creating and teaching strategies for nonviolent social change, has been selected as Swarthmore College's Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change in06-2007.

TFC is going green. Click here to learn how renovations in our building will make our office building environmentally sustainable. (If plans are fully implemented, it'd be the first existing building to implement the level of green features they intend to use.)

Training for Change launched its strategy project a little over a year ago. Already we're hearing from participants about how they're using what they learned...

TFC's04 report, including description of The Strategy Project, The Africa Project, international training (Russia, Sierra Leone, Ghana), the evolution of the "direct education" approach, the new website, and over 1,000 participants served.

The rising debate about "humanitarian military intervention" has increased interest in third-party nonviolent intervention to support human rights and peace. †Effective training is key to successful alternatives. †For two years Training for Change has researched "best practices" in training people in this field

At TFC, 17 trainers assisted 1500 activists to move toward those qualities in03. Over0 of them were given training skills to increase the ripple effect -- so thousands more can become empowered in04 to face nonviolently these turbulent times.

TFC in cooperation with the Civic House of the University of Pennsylvania launched an Activist Dialogue Project in May01. The one-year project concluded in May02 with two tangible products...The organizers of Nonviolent Peaceforce asked TFC to draft a training curriculum for the nonviolent soldiers who would be recruited from around the world and then sent to areas of hot conflict to save lives and protect human rights...36 workshops in North American with almost 1,000 participants...

The human shields in Palestine were probably the most publicized episode yet in humanity's series of experiments in inventing a new social technique: third party nonviolent intervention (TPNI).

(the activist dialogue project ended in May02)

Through facilitated discussions, people are encouraged to seriously engage and deal with some of the conflicts and problems that prevent activists from being as effective as possible. It works to unite three specific groups of activists: community-based you activists, college activists, and older more experienced activists.