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You'll find them in the attic of Starhawk's San Francisco home, or at the back of a coffee shop across from a union hall, or in the alley behind a church basement full of activists: - trainers, new ones and veterans, trying to figure out how to be more effective in supporting movements for justice, peace, and environmental harmony.

TRAINERS DON'T EXACTLY HAVE IT EASY.

Hard-pressed activists most often want skills, essential information, and a listening ear; it may seem a luxury to them to broaden the scope and prepare for the longer run. Serious trainers think in bigger terms than the current demonstration, or getting through the immediate organizational conflict. We want to build social movements powerful enough to force structural change and obtain more democracy, more equality, more freedom. And we want to support individuals to become sustainable activists, no longer teetering on the edge of burn-out.

Of course good trainers start where the people are. We do show up for countless workshops, assisting "the Battle of Seattle" and Thai farmers resisting dams and protesters at the Republican National Convention and Russian youths clamoring for human rights. A fair portion of the 700 workshops TFC has led in its fifteen years has met activists in their urgency, facing immediate needs.

And yet for us such workshops are the start of a dance, where we identify the movers and shakers, and new opportunities to assist the movements in a deeper way - to reach for empowerment.

TFC has identified five elements that seem key to us:

1. Diversity work for better teamwork and stronger coalitions.

2. Peace and conflict tools to use internally, with allies, and with opponents.

3. Facilitator training so that "every movement gets its own trainers."

4. Strategy so the hard work actually yields change over time.

5. Grounded, self-respecting leadership that furthers democracy and high productivity.

In these fifteen years we've found there are plenty of activists who do want these elements, who do have a vision of something larger than the next demonstration.

We've also found others who wouldn't necessarily identify themselves as "activists," but who also want to become culturally competent, or more able to use conflict, or prefer a more liberatory pedagogy than what they're used to.

The combination of self-identified activists and other concerned people has been a winning approach for Training for Change: serving a core constituency and also a wide periphery who want these elements.

Together, they've added up to 15,000 participants in the 700 workshops. Although TFC has mostly worked in the U.S., invitations have taken us on 78 trips to 21 countries on five continents. From the beginning we committed to the international solidarity of people making a difference.

1992: Starting with a workshop on Martin Luther King's birthday

The late Barbara Smith was the first female African American director of a peace organization in Pennsylvania. In 1992 she joined George Lakey as co-director to launch TFC. They decided against presenting workshops that others offer because they didn't want to duplicate efforts. Their experience as organizers told them that activists want a variety of workshops with engaging, hands-on methods. The group of activists and trainers that gathered around George and Barbara included Quakers and the New Society Educational Foundation, both of which nurtured the fledgling project.

DIVERSITY WORK

When in 1992 George Lakey and Barbara Smith led their first Training for Social Action Trainers workshop, they created a key precedent for TFC. They built into a pedagogy workshop a session for anti-oppression work. That workshop became TFC's flagship event, presented nearly a hundred times in multiple countries - and it became the gateway workshop for thousands of trainers each of whom was invited to an honest look at how they participate in oppressive systems.

The integration of a diversity perspective into workshops on strategy, leadership, nonviolent struggle, and teamwork became one of TFC's distinguishing characteristics. Barbara's and George's focus on liberation rather than guilt/blame/shame was taken up by other TFC trainers who joined in leading 150 workshops specifically on diversity issues, including homophobia, sexism, racism, and classism. 60 of the diversity workshops were specifically on unlearning racism, and half of these were for white people to empower them to become more effective allies of people of color. The Aspen Institute in its nationwide study of anti-racism workshops chose to include TFC's Whites Confronting Racism workshops among those highlighted. These were designed and led for years by Antje Mattheus and Lorraine Marino. Workshops were also offered specifically for people of color, led by Dr. Judith C. Jones and Daniel Hunter among others, as well as workshops that support mixed groups to move to a place where meaningful alliances and coalitions can be built.

Turbulent demonstrations at the Philadelphia Republication National Convention in00 left a sour taste in the mouth of many area activists; they left a tendency for older activists to cast blame on youths, and vice versa. A William Penn Foundation grant enabled TFC to conduct a year-long cross-generational dialogue to rebuild cohesion among social changers. As a contribution to the struggle against ageism, Iris Bloom wrote a manual based on the dialogue experience (see www.TrainingforChange.org).

PEACE AND CONFLICT TOOLS

Cambodian peace marchers were killed and wounded in contested Khmer Rouge territory and TFC trainers were brought in to share tools for continuing the marches with fewer casulties. Youth leaders from diverse parts of war-torn Balkans wanted to learn organizing skills together and were able to move through their mutual hostility because of TFC trainers. A Thai movement to save the rain forest was rocked by an assassination and TFC trainers were brought in to share tools for continuing the movement without interruption. Officials in a U.S. city asked TFC for help in changing their policies and behavior toward radical protesters, to change the city's downward spiral.

TFC has led hundreds of workshops to share tools for engaging in conflict nonviolently. Influenced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., TFC's philosophy has always been pro-conflict; a favorite slogan has been "No justice, no peace."

TFC trainers are often called on, therefore, to assist activists to create more effective ways to use nonviolent conflict to meet their goals. TFC has worked with environmentalists in the U.S. South, human rights advocates in Russia, Christian clergy in Sierra Leone, anarchists in Minnesota, students in Indonesia, the African National Congress in South Africa, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, women's movement organizers in Taiwan, and Burmese pro-democracy students, among other groups.

In01 the United Nations Institute for Training and Research brought TFC to Switzerland to work with leaders of indigenous peoples from around the world on how to use nonviolent conflict to advance human rights.

In the U.S. and Canada TFC gave major attention to the mass direct action protests of recent years.

Beginning in the nineteen-eighties a new application of nonviolent action - third party nonviolent intervention (TPNI) - had been developed. TFC became the first training organization to offer facilitation for this type of civilian peacekeeping. Matt Guynn and Karen Ridd are Training Associates with this experience.

FACILITATOR TRAINING

From its first year,TFC began to train others in its version of popular education, believing that "every social movement should have its own training capacity." In the next decade and a half TFC led over0 train-the-trainer workshops involving people from over 30 countries. In two countries - Russia and Thailand - TFC committed a decade to building national networks of activist trainers and succeeded in "working its way out of a job." In both countries there is now an internal capacity for training more facilitators in this approach.

Internationally, TFC's best-known offering has been the "Super-T," a seventeen-day learning experience held eleven times. Participants came from five continents to learn a wide variety of learning tools and facilitation skills in a multi-cultural context.

Over time TFC developed specialty workshops for activist trainers. In 11 workshops trainers learned Adventure Based Learning tools for activists; in 13 workshops they learned how to invent their own tools and how to design powerful workshops. In 31 Advanced workshops (the "AdToT") trainers explored the impact of group dynamics on learning, learned emergent design, and confronted some of their own growing edges as trainers.

TFC also offered five trainings for the AdToT grads in "How to do transformational work in workshops," plus "How to teach theory experientially."

TFC has worked with a liberal arts college faculty, a labor union, a national environmental organization, a statewide feminist network, and others to enhance the pedagogical skills of teachers and trainers. TFC has frequently built training skills for student activists, protest campaigners, and diversity trainers.

Abroad, TFC trainers have led trainings of trainers for organizations in Australia, Cambodia, Italy, Romania, and Serbia, and Uzbekistan, participated in international trainers' conferences, and led an "Asian Super-T" with participants from six countries, (in addition to the trips to Russia and Thailand that built their grassroots training networks).

Training of trainers for global peacekeeping

In the mid-nineties TFC did a series of trainings of trainers for Peace Brigades International and Christian Peacemaker Teams, forerunners in the rapidly-growing field of civilian peacekeeping (also known as Third Party Nonviolent Intervention; see "Peace and Conflict Tools," above). It then convened an international consultation of lead trainers from such organizations to identify "best practices" in training. TFC's paper on best practices led to a two-year research and development project breaking new ground in the field. Opening Space for Democracy: Training for Third Party Nonviolent Intervention is the 600 page curriculum and manual that resulted. The first draft of Opening Space guided the pilot training for the first international team of Nonviolent Peaceforce bound for Sri Lanka in03. Revised and available in CD rom as well as binder, Opening Space is a primary training resource in this growing field, and TFC has since offered trainings of trainers in Canada, the U.S. and Zimbabwe.

STRATEGY

Burning with urgency about present injustices, activists (and others) can forget about the need for middle term and long term planning. Movements also avoid strategizing in the belief that it heightens hierarchy, handing power over to the brilliant individuals in their midst. Although TFC has always assisted groups with strategy questions, in04 the Strategy Project was launched to gather tools for strategizing, improve them for activists, and invent new ones to fill the gaps. The growing strategy toolbox is dedicated to democratic process, because tools are chosen that support the emergence of collective wisdom in the group.

28 workshops resulted from the launch, plus a collection of strategy tools on the website and a strategy book nearly completed by Daniel Hunter, who directed the project. Training Associate Betsy Raasch-Gilman is a key strategy resource.

An Italian facilitator trying out TFC strategy tools in an international workshop in Switzerland put it this way: "Almost everyone pointed out that the best part for them was the strategizing process. It made them get closer to reality than any other part of the workshop, mainly because they felt empowered to act for change, understanding the challenges of good strategizing, but also its incredible possibilities."

GROUNDED, SELF-RESPECTING LEADERSHIP

TFC partnered with the Philadelphia Student Union in the 1990s to hold the Emerging Leadership Institute, a series of monthly trainings for teenagers and young adults. Training Associate Amy Steffen co-facilitated the Institute for several years.

TFC combines egalitarian values, respect for the wisdom of the group, and tools for improving leadership effectiveness. Clients from grassroots coalitions to colleges have turned to TFC for leadership workshops that build self-awareness, innovativeness, and sustainability. TFC has collaborated with stone circles, Spirit in Action, No Ordinary Time, Rowe Conference Center, Pendle Hill, and other groups that support the inner life of activist leaders.

TFC's international work with leadership included collaborating with the University of Bologna, Italy, for a series of trainings of Balkans youth leaders. In06 TFC went to Serbia to coach youths leading HIV-prevention campaigns; the workshop reached beyond the Balkans to include a total of 15 countries. In the early '90s TFC partnered with the Russian training collective Golubka to provide the first leadership training series for sexual minority leaders in Moscow and St. Petersburg, creating the basis for a growing civil rights movement.

DIRECT EDUCATION APPROACH INCREASINGLY AVAILABLE

TFC trainers were slow to realize the extent of their evolution of popular education. Participants' feedback awakened them to it, and also what they heard from the users of the tools, interventions, and curricula.

The Training Associates coined a new term for TFC's evolving theory and practice: direct education. Although still rooted in the liberatory pedagogy of Brazilian Paolo Friere, direct education adds anti-oppression interventions, group dynamics, and transformational work in an integrated way so that more and more people who are traditionally marginalized in education find themselves respected and supported in TFC's workshops.

Paradoxically, the more direct education evolved, the less "American" it became and the more compatible it became with a wide variety of cultures. TFC trainers hadn't themselves realized how much their work was being transformed by repeated, in-depth cross-cultural experiences.

"Some of the techniques the trainer showed us were ones that we use in the native American culture, with different names," said Tom Sullivan, professor of Native American studies at Syracuse University, and a member of the Mohawk nation. "I really liked how he brought the whole group into interaction with each other."

Like earlier versions of popular education, Direct Education's goal is empowerment. Unlike some earlier versions, the approach taps previously untapped growth capacities in the participants.

As activist organizations have turned to TFC for curriculum and facilitation assistance, more about Direct Education is being spelled out. Three recent examples:

- Opening Space for Democracy, 651 pp.,03, in collaboration with Nonviolent Peaceforce.

- Union Education Program,06, Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

- Counter-Recruitment Training Manual,06, American Friends Service Committee and Ruckus Society.

Many specific tools are described on the website of Training for Change, as well as Training Reports that show multi-cultural contexts for their use, and articles on aspects of TFC's experience. TFC-invented training tools are now also showing up in manuals in other countries, for example Australia.

Nearing completion: Daniel Hunter's book on tools and facilitation for groups needing strategy; George Lakey's book on Direct Education which includes experience from Training Associates. See website www.TrainingforChange.org for updates on progress of these books.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

In the early 'nineties TFC collaborated with the Center for Change to interview seasoned movement leaders and write Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times, which has been published in Canada and in translation in Cairo and Belgrade. (By Berit Lakey, George Lakey, Rod Napier, and Janice Robinson, 1995. Entire book available on TFC website.)

After conducting a year's dialogue across the activist generation gap, TFC wrote a manual from its experience (by Iris Bloom; see the TFC website). After George Lakey's formal debate on strategy with Ward Churchill at the University of Colorado, TFC published the booklet "A Sword that Heals" (in print and on website).

TFC trainers have published dozens of articles in periodicals growing out of field experience; half a dozen were included in books including David Solnit (ed.), Globalize Liberation (City Lights). Many are available on the website. TFC publications have so far been translated into Arabic, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, and Thai.

FIFTEEN YEARS: A COLLABORATIVE ACHIEVEMENT

700 workshops for 15,000 people on five continents could happen only because of the faithful support of hundreds of people: board members, Training Associates and other facilitators, office staff, volunteer logistics coordinators, local workshop organizers in towns and cities across the world, organizational partners, caterers, neighborhood people who welcomed participants into their homes, volunteers in our "guinea pig" R&D lab trainings. Subsidized workshops and scholarships depended on people who raised money, people who gave money, and foundations; the List Family Foundation and Viki Laura List were the first, largest, and most consistent source of support and John Lapham was the earliest and most consistent fundraiser. Other key supporters were the Quakers undergirding George Lakey's ministry, and trainers' family members who sacrificed time with their loved ones so the trainers could give their all in yet another workshop.

Such a community of support is no less real because it is invisible to itself as a whole. A few of us at the core of TFC know most of you, but none of us knows all of you. In that way, the achievement of TFC is like the achievement of social movements everywhere: no mirror is big enough to reflect back to us the totality of our collaboration. Yet it would be foolish to pretend that TFC's fifteen years was the achievement of one or a few. I personally hope that everyone reading this report will let her or his imagination roam, and take in for a moment the possibility that Dr. King was right: that we all are part of an inescapable garment of destiny. Let us love one another.

- George Lakey, August06

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