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. 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.

Training for Change has led 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, 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.

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.

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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