Short result: Fantastic.

The group was:
* about 50% people of color;
* half men, half women;
* half Swarthmore student; half community members;
* a wide range of issues: health care, AIDs activism, saving public libraries, protecting service net during budget cuts, environmental, local farming, affordable housing, homeless advocacy, and many more...
* coming in with high expectations, a varied sense of urgency, and all with a clear sense of where the skills will be useful.

That said, it was a worthy challenge to get people from different places to learn collectively about how to be more skilled organizers. We used our own facilitation as modeling in order to learn more about handling group dynamics. We taught a range of organizer and facilitation tools -- about 15 organizer & facilitator tools and 8 core concepts on organizing, leadership development, and ways of understanding social justice/service/change. We put together a binder with 31 handouts on those various aspects, with additional handouts with the next two workshops. Plus we set up the coaching process, with each participant getting two hours of personalized coaching.

A couple of HIGHLIGHTS:

* For students, meeting with people working on-the-ground struggles was very enlightening. Being with people who are currently fighting budget cuts, lack of affordable housing, and other issues was deeply meaningful. It added a feeling of urgency, application, and clarity about why the work of organizing can be so important. Further, students got additional coaching and support from those experienced organizers;

* For community members, it was valuable to have students in the room, too. Many of the organizers have operated in their own organizational/cultural bubble. To see one student, for example, working in China on a service project in a completely different setting was important. He grew tremendously in seeing his social service work in a larger context, which will help him relate to others much for effectively. Likewise, watching him grow and interacting with him, helped community members gain more ability in working with different cultures;

* The space at Casino-Free Philadelphia's office worked well -- a vibrant center with posters and puppets around the office. It was strong energy. In the final closing circle several students mentioned, "We're so glad this was off-campus! It allowed us to get to know the other students much better than we've ever known each other -- even after working and living together for years!" One even joked he was disappointed the last one would be on campus (I'm sure he'll see the up-side when it happens);

* Evaluations were consistently positive with several people identifying some tools that did not work for them. Thankfully, those tools were varied -- some didn't like a 101 exercise on event planning but others identified that as the most important for them; others didn't find the exercise on different roles in social change as valuable, whereas (again) it was the most important for others. So our selection was good, covering for a very wide range of approaches, beliefs, and experience in the room. None said they were disappointed they came;

A few TWEAKS for next time:

* Some said Saturday was long. Our design needs to account for the long-day of Saturday. Plus a two-hour drive home that night due to snow did not help. One way to tweak is not doing a high-energy, high-risk activity early Saturday afternoon (we had practice groups).

* Offering more challenges. Our training style created a very strong, safe container where people were able to learn. We navigated the world of cultural differences and beliefs mainly by creating a space for people to observe and appreciate. In the second section, we can probably be a little more pushy, challenging participants to engage more directly with those differences, using the safe space as a chance to uncover new patterns of behavior in handling difference.

All in all, it went really well and we're looking forward to the next workshop with great enthusiasm and energy.

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