Community Organizing: People, Power and Change

Mobilizing communities for positive social change requires educated leaders equipped with the skills to organize people and power. Organizing can make a difference in addressing major public challenges that demand full engagement of the citizenry, especially those whose voices are not heard unless they organize. Leadership is accepting responsibility to enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty. Organizing is a way to lead by identifying, recruiting and developing more leadership; building community around that leadership; and building power from the resources of that community. In this course, each student accepts responsibility for organizing constituents to achieve an outcome by the end of the semester. As reflective practitioners, students learn to analyze their leadership of this campaign.