Stepping into community and movement space means making sense of who we are and why we are there. The goal of this course is to prepare community builders and movement change makers to step into the arena with some basic personal questions answered: Who am I in this space, what do I want to offer, what will I learn, and how do I want to change the world around me in a way only I can do? In this course, learners will move through positionality, values, communication, and listening styles and get a brief intro to the self in community. We are often thrust into change without being able to make decisions about how we shape it. This course will give us the tools to know ourselves better and gently shape the changes we are called to make.

So many of us long to create a culture of care and nurturance in our communities – and to enjoy the benefits of membership in such communities at work, at school, in our neighborhoods, in our affinity groups, and our social circles. This course aims to prepare students to advocate for, contribute to, and co-create cultures of kindness and compassion, inclusion, diversity, problem-solving, harm reduction, and joy. As you move through the course, you will sense answers to the question originally posed by Nora Samaran: “What would it feel like to trust the fabric of our human community so fully that we could take the risk to belong in this way, belong as our whole selves?” Through this study, you will encounter the intellectual and theoretical frameworks for caring communities and hone concrete tools and skills to cultivate such communities. After building self-knowledge and exploring the meaning and making of community, you will learn communication and leadership skills as well as problem-solving and decision-making processes. You will also learn to distinguish conflict and harm and be able to address each productively. The end result is a web of reciprocity and commitment that enables us to mend brokenness, cultivate possibility, and center joy in our communal lives.

To move forward strategically, it is important to understand the historical conditions that gave rise to social change, coalition building and movements across the world. By exploring the individual strengths, weaknesses, tactics and strategies of coalitions and movements, we can more effectively support needed shifts in society.

In this course, you will encounter and implement strategies for (1) honoring and integrating with diverse peoples and cultures; (2) advancing equity for historically marginalized groups; and (3) navigating circumstances where #1 & #2 conflict. Course content will focus on knowledge gathering with and exchange across generations, gender roles and identities, religions/cultural groups, and social groupings/economic status. Case studies in this course span civil rights movements in the 20th century United States and contemporary food movements.

As you seek to rebalance power and shape change, you will also be able to balance deep respect for the past, empathy for those navigating an increasingly challenging present and volatile near-future, and caring attentiveness to the needs of future generations.

Research into pro-social change – the kind that improves the world around us – all leads to empathy as the most powerful force for connection, community building, human understanding, and change. This course delves deep into the ways empathy can create the world we want to inhabit. We will explore points of view on how empathy changes politics, impacts movements, creates a space for quantitative data-based knowledge acquisition, and makes us better change makers.

In this course, you will learn about how empathy works, find it in action around values, understand polarization, and work on the skills of intellectual humility and attunement to make possible the changes we need.

Stories make change possible. This is true for individuals, organizations, and communities. Because the stories we tell can either narrow or expand the space for change, narrative offers a potent way to build strategy for social and environmental justice. Narrative interventions give both somatic and intellectual power to the information people need to make change.

In this class, you will engage with narrative tools to shift minds and behaviors. You need not be a gifted writer or voracious reader to become an effective user of story strategy. You will be presented with insights from neuroscience, trauma theory, change management, communications theory, organizational psychology, and emergent strategy through hands-on practice, case stories, media, and real-world experimentation. These insights will make it much easier to engage successfully with stakeholders across policy, management, industry, citizen groups, and in educational settings. You will come away ready to apply the empathic skills environmental, food systems, and social changemakers need to communicate across differences in identity, world view, and lived experience. You will gain confidence in operating more effectively under conditions of socio-political polarization and in breaking stalemates on matters of eco-social concern.