Need to dive into class but are looking for a tool that's short? Here's our take on a classic "Star Power" to give participants a quick experience of rank and privilege, especially economic class.

Three related tools to help any group interact with its own margin. A good workshop provides opportunities for mainstream people to get new information about margins, in a way that goes below the surface and involves the emotional learning channel. The expectation is that, by highlighting the experience of a few margins in a dramatic way, participants will learn that they need to become pro-active in order to be fair with people on the margins. Similarly, the experience of powerfully speaking often increases the margins' self-confidence and clarity.

A activity to help groups look at mainstream/margin dynamics. This simple tool can uncover a deeper level of understanding of how mainstream/margin operates in that group.

A physical exercise to help participants stand up for themselves -- literally. It's a great way to help margins stand up for themselves and mainstreams become more conscious and less stuck in shame.

A diversity tool also known as Crossing the Line, this one is best used with a buddy system and placed in a workshop after considerable safety is built. It's sometimes the most powerful experience participants have in a workshop, about the social construction of oppression.

We invented this in response to trainers asking us: what do you do with a group that is genuinely clueless about its racism (sexism/homophobia/ etc.)? We found it works with low-consciousness groups and has tremendous value for experienced activist groups, too.

Whenever a new group forms people are always curious: Who else is in the room? This kinesthetic exercise allows peoples curiousity to show up and to learn about who is in the room. And, does it in a way that gets people working together.

Team types is a straightforward tool for participants to learn about themselves through identifying within four different categories, each representing different aspects of how people may operate in group settings.

Getting help can be hard. It runs counter to many of cultural values: independence, individuality, personal control, self-help, competition, to name a few. Activists tend to focus on skills on help others – but spend less emphasis on our own development.

Getting help is necessary. If we are to grow, learn, not burn-out, and win then we need help. In this tool we create some space and time for people to think through how can they continue to learn and get help.

This exercise is meant as a follow-up to the Spectrum of Allies exercise. We develop arguments and one specific request to move a given constituency one wedge over to our side. We then roleplay the interaction.

A quick exercise to help groups get an example of "What is strategy?" (as opposed to tactics and vision). All that's needed for this tool: a group and a blanket!

This approach to strategizing serves bottom-up preferences in building social movements. In Starhawk's terms, it serves power-with rather than power-over, and is inherently democratic.

A tool to connect many activists favorite topic -- tactics -- with larger questions of strategy. It uses tactical thinking to help connect to larger frameworks for social change.

This activity we learned from Ouyporn Khuankeaw, a trainer in Thailand who most often works with village development workers, women leaders, monks and nuns, and NGO staff. She finds that popular education/experiential education is easier for participants to get the most out of if they understand that it is actually a different model from the prevailing teacher-centered model.

Here's an alternative to lecturing about a topic when you want important information to be transmitted: have people find their own successful experience! This tool uses individual work, small groups and then large group to help the group access its own wisdom about a particular topic (you decide the topic based on the elicitive questions you use: fundraising, carrying out a successful protest, leading a group, overcoming a challenge).

Looking for fresh ideas for your closing circles? Here are some of our favorites that we have used with different groups! E-mail us with new closing circle favorites.

How to set up many simultaneous one-on-one interactions in your training group; great for skill-building, for applying a principle you've just taught, for community-building, or for raising individual awareness.

An updated version of the commonly used "nonviolence spectrums." Use this tool to help a group looks at its diversity of opinion on issues related to nonviolence along with see unexpected commonalities and similarities.

How could young activists nonviolently overthrow Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic? This experiential tool shows the dynamics of mass noncooperation, and can be used by any group that wants to learn more about democratic power.

"Without a vision the people perish" | This tool has worked in every culture where we've tried it so far, for increasing unity in a group, opening its creativity, and assisting protest groups to say what they're for as well as what they're against.

One of our favorite tools to push group's outside of their comfort zone, build confidence, and practice reclaiming a lost art.

Looking for some role-play ideas for teaching accompaniment or intervention for unarmed bodyguards? Here are some ideas we collected for our training manual.

How to help participants handle their anxiety about entering a violent confrontation? This tool is designed to walk participants through a series of increasing challenges to help them gain confidence in working in violent settings, to stay more aware in the midst of physical conflict.

This drill teaches security skills/concepts, cultural sensitivity, information and threat analysis, and decision-making. It's an energetic tool as the team gathers information to uncover whether it's becoming a target by the government in this extended role-play.

Participants practice expanding their vision and paying attention to what's around them. It's a quick skill development tool.

While third-party nonviolent intervention and other peace team work is becoming more common, it's still a challenge: how to explain our work to others? Internationally, the framing of peacebuilding, peacemaking and peacekeeping is widely used. This tool helps fieldworkers relate that framework to their actual work in the field.

This design allows participants to reflect, in a natural and easy flow, about personal sustainability and self-care: it uses participants' experience to uncover new lessons and appreciate old ones. It's also a powerful tool for self-revelation about the relationship between depletion of energy and increase of energy.