08/16/2012
Happy end of summer/beginning of new school year! During the Spring 2012 semester, the National Community Organizing Student Network's cohort at Hunter College worked to grow the network by reaching out to professors and students at schools throughout the country with community organizing related programs. The group put together the following paper on the effort. We will continue this effort this fall. Stay in touch!
- Allison, Hunter
National Community Organizing Student Network at Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
Zuhira Ahmad
Renée Council
Holly Gooden
Deandra Khan
Priska Pedernera
Nancy Simmons
Christina Stang
Cheryl Taruc
Allison Weingarten
Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
Community Organizing Planning & Development I
Dr. Terry Mizrahi
May 22, 2012
Introduction
In the Fall of 2011 a group of students from the Community Organizing, Planning and Development II course designed and implemented on online network of social work students. In particular, they focused on collaborating with graduate level social work programs that had community organizing or similar macro-level tracts. In their preliminary stages they communicated with the University of Connecticut and the University of Pittsburgh engaging in a video conference and building a website where each school could contribute their thoughts and concerns in an effort to increase student organizing capacities across multiple programs.
This semester a group of nine students in the Community Organizing, Planning, and Development I course decided to follow-up with this project. We focused, primarily, on expanding the network, by identifying macro-level social work programs throughout the country and reaching out to them. It is our hope that our work building this network will have productive implications for future networking efforts among students across the country.
Models
One of the major models we used was community-building because we worked as a unit, of Silberman School of Social Work, to contact other social work schools with community organizing methods. Building relationships with these schools there were communities to work with, allowing for a larger coalition. Rubin and Rubin (2008) note that these processes are sponsored by foundations, such as the Silberman School of Social Work, and work toward rebuilding infrastructure, which is being created by community-building through the different schools. This creates community linkages and systems of support by allowing for students to correspond with one another at all times. Sen (2003) talks about realizing differences while working toward solidarity between different communities, which recognizes that the schools have different learning models and topics. As a secular organism, however, we can work together to influence community organizing, planning and development programs nationally.
The coalition advocacy model was implemented by creating a community between the separate schools. Rubin and Rubin (2008) explain coalition building as an organization that “speaks for its members, made up of organizations rather than individuals” (p. 39). With this coalition advocacy there is the possibility for the students from these schools to create a larger network that speaks for one another as a single entity. If there is subject matter missing from all the schools involved the students can speak with one voice to talk with their professors and the deans in order to influence curriculum.
Community education and leadership development (Rubin & Rubin, 2008) was used throughout the campaign by trying to create a community out of the various national programs. We worked together to reach out to other programs that could help us create a supportive network in which we could all talk about our schools and the issues we faced.
Organizational and group development connected with leadership in terms of who created the documents we would work from and who decided deadlines. As a group we agreed on deadlines and people nominated themselves to start the Google documents online. Within group development, an email thread was created to allow for easy communication between all group members. This allowed for some people to write whenever they felt it was important to get in touch with the group and send them information about what they had been working on.
Planning and program development were key aspects of the project because planning was needed in order for us to work as a group. We were given separate assignments and we individually decided who would contact each school. We took personal responsibility over whom to contact and how to correspond with that individual, although without planning and development it would have been impossible to create such a structure. Without that structure, we would have been less organized and less aware of our individual responsibilities.
Using all of these models collectively was effective. Many of them have overlapping similarities, allowing us to draw from multiple models, expanding our flexibility. This helped with the advancement of the project because a singular perspective did not limit us.
The Campaign’s History
The current second-year students at the Silberman School of Social Work started the National Community Organizing Networking Project. It was initiated in October 2011, out of the videoconference project assigned in the Community Organizing, Planning and Development II course.
The students reached out to two other schools, University of Connecticut and University of Pittsburgh, who were also signed up through their professors to participate in and organize the videoconference. All of the participating students agreed that ongoing conversations among community organizing students across the country could have a positive impact on students and their organizing efforts.
The Hunter student cohort took on the task of initiating the coalition by building a beta website and adding components of a blog, school pages, and plans for a newsletter. The purpose of the website was to connect students across the country who are interested in community organizing. One student from each school was assigned to the coalition, with the idea of passing the torch in the spring semester to a continuing organizing student as the founding members would be graduating.
Defining and Documenting Campaign Needs
The COP&D II group from Fall 2011 initially established and defined the needs in the project’s original design. The Occupy Wall Street movement and a desire to connect students to the issue across their academic boundaries largely inspired the coalition. Conscious of the rising prevalence of social networking as an organizing tool (Krishna 2011), the coalition was formed online and the website became the central space for the expression of needs and shared ideas.
The initial space for defining and documenting need was through the website. Each school leader, from the original participating programs, had access to a space to post blogs that were reflective of some of the core issues in their programs and their communities. The hope was to have individuals do this regularly so that a consistent dialogue occurred, but, according to Erica Cohen, the reality was less consistent (personal communication, May 10, 2012). Regardless, these blog spaces became the areas in which students defined and documented the needs within their programs and communities.
Building upon this model we worked to expand the network. We focused on expanding the student network, despite having identified some of the website’s limitations, as noted previously. Our objective was to build the network by reaching out, nationally, to other schools with similar community organizing social work methods. Professor Mizrahi provided us with a list of relevant programs across the country and, dividing the list up among the group members, we began the process of outreach.
We documented our contacts noting the responses in a Google Doc spreadsheet. All of the group members had access to the document and could edit it as changes occurred. For the more complex questions and feedback that we received when reaching out we shared many group emails and met in person to address these more specific needs. Sharing an ongoing document as well as group emails served as a useful reference.
Defining and documenting needs will be an evolving process as the network builds. The degree to which the website is utilized will also determine to what extent needs are documented and addressed. The structure could easily take on an alternative form depending on what is conducive to effective collaboration. The extent to which the network grows will determine how needs are most effectively communicated. Once this network is established, the process of documenting needs will look much different than they do currently.
Leadership, Participation, and Decision-Making Processes
As this networking group was already formed before our group took it on, leadership and decision-making power had already been established. The established leadership, however, was not responsible for moving the project forward. Erica Cohen was the formal leader of the group when the group formed in 2011, but as she would be graduating, Professor Mizrahi carried on the project by introducing it to a new student group.
When our class became aware of the project and the need for the coalition, we stepped up to join the project, becoming new leaders. We met with the leaders of the past out of necessity and respect in order to learn the project’s history to begin moving forward with it. Professor Mizrahi organized the new group’s first meeting and invited Erica so she could share the project’s history.
Professor Mizrahi made it clear that she would play a more supporting role during the project but was invested in it and wanted to see it succeed. Erica would be available to answer questions but did not have the time to continue her leadership position. In the first meeting, no new leadership was formed and Professor Mizrahi and Erica Cohen explained the history of the project and some possible next steps.
The next step for the new group members was to arrange a follow-up meeting. Professor Mizrahi was included in the email chains to plan for the next meeting but in an effort to establish ourselves as the new project leaders and to not overwhelm Professor Mizrahi with minor project details we removed her from the email chain, including her only during crucial moments. For example, we reached out to her when we needed assistance reserving a room. We invited Professor Mizrahi to the second meeting. This demonstrated a shift in leadership.
In the next meeting, Professor Mizrahi was not present at the beginning and the nine members began discussing what we would like to see happen with this project in the short and long terms. We assigned roles: note takers, organizers to gather contact information for the different schools, email and phone script designers for outreach, liaisons to Professor Mizrahi and Erica Cohen. We did not assign one overall leader. Although we never discussed the reasons for this, it was likely both a reflection of the current effort of community organizers to utilize a women-centered model of organizing, in which everyone has a leadership role, and it was also an effort for no one group member to appear as if they were taking control over the project.
“Even though women have historically played a central role in building communities, they have largely been excluded from formal leadership roles...Through personal sharing, careful listening and ongoing relationship building, the members of women-centered teams support one another at a personal level while working collectively to develop hands-on projects and initiatives to achieve their community vision” (Smock, 2004, p.25).
As we were making these foundational decisions, Professor Mizrahi walked into the room. Immediately the dynamics in the room changed. Professor Mizrahi was back to being the leader. She gave her opinion of where she wished the project to go, which was in line with our ideas (the short term goal was outreach and membership from other schools). Although her presence in the room did not change the goals, it did change the decision-making power. When she left we all resumed our roles we had assigned ourselves, but we never lost the realization that Professor Mizrahi is the informal leader on this project, which makes sense as she will be the one to carry the torch on this project long after we have graduated. Although we all seemed to engage in ‘democratic decision making’ both within the group and with Professor Mizrahi, according to Boehm and Staples (2005):
When a person complies with the demands of someone holding a position of authority (such as rulers, officials or managers), it is difficult to distinguish whether the former is acting out of free will or as a result of fear of the authoritative figure (p.79).
One aspect of leadership, which we did not initially acknowledge, was our relationship with the schools we were reaching out to, particularly the schools that we already had relationships with, the University of Connecticut and the University of Pittsburgh. As a group we formed the goal of inviting about thirty other schools with community organizing or macro programs to be involved in the network. After deciding to reach out to other programs we realized that we never consulted the schools who were already part of the network, limiting their access to the decision-making process.
As a group we decided to be honest with the two schools and tell them that we were new to the network and working on starting the network back up. We told them about our effort and invited them to continue with the network and let us know how they would like to participate moving forward. The way in which we reached out to these two schools though showed that we had power over the project; it was our project that they could be involved in. Although some group members were concerned with how this power differential would come across to the other schools, the other schools responded in an appreciative and enthusiastic manner. Like us, they too were in search of new students in their school to continue on with the network.
Leadership Moving Forward
A couple students have expressed interest in continuing with this project through the fall. These students will likely informally become the leaders on this project. As Erica Cohen is graduating, the current group members are reaching out to her to make sure the group has enough information to continue the project without her. Professor Mizrahi will remain a leader in collaboration with the current student leaders.
Coalition’s Lead Organizations
Based on conversations with Erica Cohen, our group understood Hunter, Connecticut and Pittsburgh to be the lead organizations in the national network. As noted earlier, we decided that expanding that network was going to be one of our main focus points this semester, since it seemed a good first step in reinvigorating the network and because it gave each one of us in the project a clear task. Initial outreach to Connecticut and Pittsburgh showed that these other schools had not continued or resuscitated the work as Hunter did. Therefore, Hunter unintentionally or by default could be conceived of as the lead, or at least most active, organization of the coalition. Although Connecticut and Pittsburgh did not appear to be active, Hunter still considered them to be lead organizations.
In conducting outreach, we found that people from other macro-level programs were enthusiastic about the project and did want to keep in touch with us as our work progressed. We had not created any strict goals regarding the number of schools or people we hoped to have join the network. Initially, we intended just to discover if there was any interest or new allies. Moving into the Fall semester, we will view these interested parties as our allies.
The network has no traditional opposition or competition that we were aware of. However, we of course experienced many dilemmas that come with being a lead organization within a coalition. The communication, continuity, and collaboration challenged us especially since time and prior lack of connection to the other schools were important factors. Upon reviewing the work of Okamoto (2001), we understand this is a natural complexity of coalition work that involves people in different geographical locations and across different periods in time.
Again, we now realize that it was problematic for us to have not asked the other two schools to participate in our decision-making. It was not a mindful omission, but one it seems the Hunter group made on a strategic level. By not concentrating on or omitting collaboration, we may have been able to focus our work, conduct more outreach, and gain a better understanding of the coalition. Nonetheless, I think we all agreed that moving forward we should be more mindful on how to engage with and be inclusive of all the groups historically involved with the network.
Our Roles within the Campaign
When we met with Professor Mizrahi, initially, she asked the group to sort out our roles and responsibilities. Shortly after our first meeting with her and Erica Cohen the nine of us had our first meeting. In fact we had several meetings and our first meeting really set the tone for the campaign. First, we knew our time for this campaign was limited. In the first meeting it was important for us to agree on what we will and will not be addressing during this campaign. This “is the bedrock on which our eventual [results] will be evaluated” (Burghardt, 2011, p.40). The biggest decision made in the first meeting was where the focus of this campaign would be. There was a unanimous consensus to continue our focus on outreach and building relationships with other programs.
Additionally in our first meeting, the group decided not to select a facilitator for this session; the option of selecting one for future meetings was left open. Christina Stang chose the role of liaison to Professor Mizrahi and Zuhira Ahmad is our liaison with Erica Cohen. Because we are all very busy people, we began looking for the most effective way to keep in touch and exchange information. We use emails and Google docs to stay connected and to compile material for the campaign.
Allison Weingarten created our first document, which was a list of the thirty programs to contact throughout the campaign with all of the schools’ current contact information. Each group member was able to access the document and abstract four to five schools to contact. Cheryl Taruc took on the role of creating our script to be used to contact the school via email and telephone.
Another major role are the note takers in the group. Nancy Simmons and Renée Council chose the role of note takers during our meetings. The notes were very comprehensive and they were posted on Blackboard in our campaign discussion section.
Google technology was an important part of our campaign. “In 1990, Google was neither a powerful web search engine nor a verb used by people seeking information” (Burghardt, 2011, p45). In comparison to the 1990’s, today’s Internet technology offered an enormous opportunity for us to collect and compile relatively accurate hard data on each of the social work schools. Because of this accessibility, we were able to spend more time contacting the schools rather than spending our time searching for the school’s information.
Each of us had different roles and our common role was to make sure we all stayed in communication throughout the entire campaign. Tasks were met as needed. The decision-making powers of the group remained shared among all of the members (Staples 2004). Professor Mizrahi was made aware of all of the groups’ decisions though the group’s liaison.
Leadership Strategies and Styles
As Professor Mizrahi noted, our group had a shared leadership approach (class discussion, May 15, 2012) throughout the campaign. Rather than having a designated leader, people within our group stepped forward to take on responsibilities according to their interests and/or abilities. At our second meeting, we initially discussed the idea of establishing roles, as previously noted. We also discussed whether or not we should designate a facilitator to initiate meetings and keep group discussions on track. As we have mentioned, we did not decide on a formal group leader, but rather took on informal leadership in various specific tasks.
By not designating a leader, the group created a space where everyone had equal voice and opportunity to contribute in the group; no one person’s contributions in meetings or written work held more authority or value than another’s. In this sense, our leadership approach was reminiscent of the non-hierarchical framework used in feminist organizing (Pyles, 2009, p.71). Our desire for non-competitive inclusiveness—to make room for all nine members to make meaningful contributions to the campaign—further speaks to the feminist framework. We each had the opportunity to initiate action and be the face (or rather, the voice) of the campaign when conducting outreach to our respective schools. That we were able to select which schools to contact, and suggest and/or take on other tasks that spoke to us, rather than doing something that was merely assigned, engendered a strong sense of buy-in (Pyles, 2009) and agency (Freire, 1993).
We continued to use this shared leadership approach for the duration of our campaign. Over the course of the last two months, different members suggested meeting dates and times via email, which the rest of the group responded to, and set up separate meetings with Professor Mizrahi and Erica. If group members were unable to attend meetings, another group member would either volunteer to personally bring them up to speed, or the person would simply consult the meeting minutes, which were posted on Blackboard and/or emailed out to the entire group. Through brainstorming and discussion, we collectively determined and refined our campaign goals, what information and materials we needed to conduct outreach and possible next steps for the group and campaign. We used the meeting minutes as a group record to ensure that all tasks had been accounted for and accurately recorded; Renée initially categorized this as the “resolutions” section. The group collectively established deadlines for work submission, and communicated with each other if and when issues arose in meeting said deadlines.
The Campaign’s Effectiveness
In terms of effectiveness and how success is measured, in regards to the campaign, this is a matter of opinion. Former, current, and future students involved in the project, will have taken on various roles in its development. They will have experienced their own progress and project setbacks. Therefore, each annual CO student group that signs on to take this project will measure their own success in the overall creation of the CO network.
The project was initiated back in October of 2011. The original student members were successful. Their success is measured by the fact that a video conference took place where both the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Connecticut agreed to keep the conversation going and establish a national collaborative to link all organizing students to this network. Out of that, the project’s website was born. The purpose of the site is to connect schools and students interested in community organizing programs and to share not only ideas, but ways in which we as the student body could assist one another.
Much of the success thus far, is attributed to the hard work and commitment from former project leaders, like Erica Cohen and Professor Mizrahi. As far as our groups’ involvement and dynamic was concerned, we naturally selected shared-leadership roles, following a women-centered model of organizing. Each member had equal responsibility, say and vote as to what was expected, discussed and agreed upon. This lead to a seamless and organic transition from last year’s students. Some of us have even committed to take this project on next year, and see it through for another term.
Another measurable success factor was our communication and organizational tools. Much of our groups’ communication was via the Internet. In the past, students have engaged in video conference calls with other schools to establish lines of communication. The projects’ website is another useful tool which, unfortunately, has been less utilized than we had hoped. It continues to have great potential, considering how human connectedness has evolved with the use of the Internet.
The website has not been a great success at this point, but it is an area that should be of focus as we move forward. Re-booting the website and strengthening our connections with participating schools’ faculty and students should be top priorities. Time limitations and student commitment may hinder these objectives. This is one of the biggest obstacles truncating the project’s success. Without the student body committed and actively engaged in the process of this network, the invested efforts of all will be a measurable waste.
Moving forward and seeing where this project can lead us, lies in the steps we take from this point on. The success of the project and its potential benefits depend on it. Therefore, part of our group’s work is to build on what has already been started, and to help incoming community organizing students do the same. Building on new ideas, evolving as a group and connecting with one another remains the ultimate objective.
Works Cited
Boehm, A., & Staples, L. (2005). Grassroots leadership in task-oriented groups: Learning from successful leaders. Social Work With Groups, 28(2), 77-96.
Burghardt, S. (2011). Macro practice in social work for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Fellin, P. (2001). The community and the social worker. Itasca, IL: Peacock.
Fisher, R. (1994). Let the people decide: Neighborhood organizing in America. New York: Twayne Publishers.
Fisher, R. & Corciullo, D. (2011). Rebuilding community organizing education in social work. Journal of Community Practice, 19(4), 355-368.
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Press.
Krishna, M.V. (2011). Think local, act global: A case-example of 21st-century macro practice through the power of social networking. In S. Burghardt (Ed.) Macro practice in social work for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Okamoto, S. (2001). Interagency collaboration with high risk gang youth. Child and
Adolescent Social Work Journal, 18(1), 5-19.
Pyles, L. (2009). Progressive community organizing: A critical approach for a globalizing world. New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Rubin & Rubin (2008). Models for implementing progressive social change. In Community organizing & development (4th ed.), Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing, 33-58.
Sen, R. (2003). Chapter 1: New realities: integrated strategies. In Stir it up: Lessons in community organizing & advocacy, 1 - 23. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Smock, K. (2004). Democracy in action: Community organizing & urban change. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Staples, L. (2004). Roots to power: A manual for grassroots organizing (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
11/1/2011
Thank you for visiting the blog. Members of the student advisory committee posts on this blog to inform students in community organizing programs around the world about the work that is being done in their communities, and interesting community organizing efforts in their area. We hope you will comment and join the conversation! If you have an idea for a blog post, please contact the Student Advisory Board or the representative from your school (contact information is on the "About" page.
Erica, Hunter
Happy end of summer/beginning of new school year! During the Spring 2012 semester, the National Community Organizing Student Network's cohort at Hunter College worked to grow the network by reaching out to professors and students at schools throughout the country with community organizing related programs. The group put together the following paper on the effort. We will continue this effort this fall. Stay in touch!
- Allison, Hunter
National Community Organizing Student Network at Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
Zuhira Ahmad
Renée Council
Holly Gooden
Deandra Khan
Priska Pedernera
Nancy Simmons
Christina Stang
Cheryl Taruc
Allison Weingarten
Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College
Community Organizing Planning & Development I
Dr. Terry Mizrahi
May 22, 2012
Introduction
In the Fall of 2011 a group of students from the Community Organizing, Planning and Development II course designed and implemented on online network of social work students. In particular, they focused on collaborating with graduate level social work programs that had community organizing or similar macro-level tracts. In their preliminary stages they communicated with the University of Connecticut and the University of Pittsburgh engaging in a video conference and building a website where each school could contribute their thoughts and concerns in an effort to increase student organizing capacities across multiple programs.
This semester a group of nine students in the Community Organizing, Planning, and Development I course decided to follow-up with this project. We focused, primarily, on expanding the network, by identifying macro-level social work programs throughout the country and reaching out to them. It is our hope that our work building this network will have productive implications for future networking efforts among students across the country.
Models
One of the major models we used was community-building because we worked as a unit, of Silberman School of Social Work, to contact other social work schools with community organizing methods. Building relationships with these schools there were communities to work with, allowing for a larger coalition. Rubin and Rubin (2008) note that these processes are sponsored by foundations, such as the Silberman School of Social Work, and work toward rebuilding infrastructure, which is being created by community-building through the different schools. This creates community linkages and systems of support by allowing for students to correspond with one another at all times. Sen (2003) talks about realizing differences while working toward solidarity between different communities, which recognizes that the schools have different learning models and topics. As a secular organism, however, we can work together to influence community organizing, planning and development programs nationally.
The coalition advocacy model was implemented by creating a community between the separate schools. Rubin and Rubin (2008) explain coalition building as an organization that “speaks for its members, made up of organizations rather than individuals” (p. 39). With this coalition advocacy there is the possibility for the students from these schools to create a larger network that speaks for one another as a single entity. If there is subject matter missing from all the schools involved the students can speak with one voice to talk with their professors and the deans in order to influence curriculum.
Community education and leadership development (Rubin & Rubin, 2008) was used throughout the campaign by trying to create a community out of the various national programs. We worked together to reach out to other programs that could help us create a supportive network in which we could all talk about our schools and the issues we faced.
Organizational and group development connected with leadership in terms of who created the documents we would work from and who decided deadlines. As a group we agreed on deadlines and people nominated themselves to start the Google documents online. Within group development, an email thread was created to allow for easy communication between all group members. This allowed for some people to write whenever they felt it was important to get in touch with the group and send them information about what they had been working on.
Planning and program development were key aspects of the project because planning was needed in order for us to work as a group. We were given separate assignments and we individually decided who would contact each school. We took personal responsibility over whom to contact and how to correspond with that individual, although without planning and development it would have been impossible to create such a structure. Without that structure, we would have been less organized and less aware of our individual responsibilities.
Using all of these models collectively was effective. Many of them have overlapping similarities, allowing us to draw from multiple models, expanding our flexibility. This helped with the advancement of the project because a singular perspective did not limit us.
The Campaign’s History
The current second-year students at the Silberman School of Social Work started the National Community Organizing Networking Project. It was initiated in October 2011, out of the videoconference project assigned in the Community Organizing, Planning and Development II course.
The students reached out to two other schools, University of Connecticut and University of Pittsburgh, who were also signed up through their professors to participate in and organize the videoconference. All of the participating students agreed that ongoing conversations among community organizing students across the country could have a positive impact on students and their organizing efforts.
The Hunter student cohort took on the task of initiating the coalition by building a beta website and adding components of a blog, school pages, and plans for a newsletter. The purpose of the website was to connect students across the country who are interested in community organizing. One student from each school was assigned to the coalition, with the idea of passing the torch in the spring semester to a continuing organizing student as the founding members would be graduating.
Defining and Documenting Campaign Needs
The COP&D II group from Fall 2011 initially established and defined the needs in the project’s original design. The Occupy Wall Street movement and a desire to connect students to the issue across their academic boundaries largely inspired the coalition. Conscious of the rising prevalence of social networking as an organizing tool (Krishna 2011), the coalition was formed online and the website became the central space for the expression of needs and shared ideas.
The initial space for defining and documenting need was through the website. Each school leader, from the original participating programs, had access to a space to post blogs that were reflective of some of the core issues in their programs and their communities. The hope was to have individuals do this regularly so that a consistent dialogue occurred, but, according to Erica Cohen, the reality was less consistent (personal communication, May 10, 2012). Regardless, these blog spaces became the areas in which students defined and documented the needs within their programs and communities.
Building upon this model we worked to expand the network. We focused on expanding the student network, despite having identified some of the website’s limitations, as noted previously. Our objective was to build the network by reaching out, nationally, to other schools with similar community organizing social work methods. Professor Mizrahi provided us with a list of relevant programs across the country and, dividing the list up among the group members, we began the process of outreach.
We documented our contacts noting the responses in a Google Doc spreadsheet. All of the group members had access to the document and could edit it as changes occurred. For the more complex questions and feedback that we received when reaching out we shared many group emails and met in person to address these more specific needs. Sharing an ongoing document as well as group emails served as a useful reference.
Defining and documenting needs will be an evolving process as the network builds. The degree to which the website is utilized will also determine to what extent needs are documented and addressed. The structure could easily take on an alternative form depending on what is conducive to effective collaboration. The extent to which the network grows will determine how needs are most effectively communicated. Once this network is established, the process of documenting needs will look much different than they do currently.
Leadership, Participation, and Decision-Making Processes
As this networking group was already formed before our group took it on, leadership and decision-making power had already been established. The established leadership, however, was not responsible for moving the project forward. Erica Cohen was the formal leader of the group when the group formed in 2011, but as she would be graduating, Professor Mizrahi carried on the project by introducing it to a new student group.
When our class became aware of the project and the need for the coalition, we stepped up to join the project, becoming new leaders. We met with the leaders of the past out of necessity and respect in order to learn the project’s history to begin moving forward with it. Professor Mizrahi organized the new group’s first meeting and invited Erica so she could share the project’s history.
Professor Mizrahi made it clear that she would play a more supporting role during the project but was invested in it and wanted to see it succeed. Erica would be available to answer questions but did not have the time to continue her leadership position. In the first meeting, no new leadership was formed and Professor Mizrahi and Erica Cohen explained the history of the project and some possible next steps.
The next step for the new group members was to arrange a follow-up meeting. Professor Mizrahi was included in the email chains to plan for the next meeting but in an effort to establish ourselves as the new project leaders and to not overwhelm Professor Mizrahi with minor project details we removed her from the email chain, including her only during crucial moments. For example, we reached out to her when we needed assistance reserving a room. We invited Professor Mizrahi to the second meeting. This demonstrated a shift in leadership.
In the next meeting, Professor Mizrahi was not present at the beginning and the nine members began discussing what we would like to see happen with this project in the short and long terms. We assigned roles: note takers, organizers to gather contact information for the different schools, email and phone script designers for outreach, liaisons to Professor Mizrahi and Erica Cohen. We did not assign one overall leader. Although we never discussed the reasons for this, it was likely both a reflection of the current effort of community organizers to utilize a women-centered model of organizing, in which everyone has a leadership role, and it was also an effort for no one group member to appear as if they were taking control over the project.
“Even though women have historically played a central role in building communities, they have largely been excluded from formal leadership roles...Through personal sharing, careful listening and ongoing relationship building, the members of women-centered teams support one another at a personal level while working collectively to develop hands-on projects and initiatives to achieve their community vision” (Smock, 2004, p.25).
As we were making these foundational decisions, Professor Mizrahi walked into the room. Immediately the dynamics in the room changed. Professor Mizrahi was back to being the leader. She gave her opinion of where she wished the project to go, which was in line with our ideas (the short term goal was outreach and membership from other schools). Although her presence in the room did not change the goals, it did change the decision-making power. When she left we all resumed our roles we had assigned ourselves, but we never lost the realization that Professor Mizrahi is the informal leader on this project, which makes sense as she will be the one to carry the torch on this project long after we have graduated. Although we all seemed to engage in ‘democratic decision making’ both within the group and with Professor Mizrahi, according to Boehm and Staples (2005):
When a person complies with the demands of someone holding a position of authority (such as rulers, officials or managers), it is difficult to distinguish whether the former is acting out of free will or as a result of fear of the authoritative figure (p.79).
One aspect of leadership, which we did not initially acknowledge, was our relationship with the schools we were reaching out to, particularly the schools that we already had relationships with, the University of Connecticut and the University of Pittsburgh. As a group we formed the goal of inviting about thirty other schools with community organizing or macro programs to be involved in the network. After deciding to reach out to other programs we realized that we never consulted the schools who were already part of the network, limiting their access to the decision-making process.
As a group we decided to be honest with the two schools and tell them that we were new to the network and working on starting the network back up. We told them about our effort and invited them to continue with the network and let us know how they would like to participate moving forward. The way in which we reached out to these two schools though showed that we had power over the project; it was our project that they could be involved in. Although some group members were concerned with how this power differential would come across to the other schools, the other schools responded in an appreciative and enthusiastic manner. Like us, they too were in search of new students in their school to continue on with the network.
Leadership Moving Forward
A couple students have expressed interest in continuing with this project through the fall. These students will likely informally become the leaders on this project. As Erica Cohen is graduating, the current group members are reaching out to her to make sure the group has enough information to continue the project without her. Professor Mizrahi will remain a leader in collaboration with the current student leaders.
Coalition’s Lead Organizations
Based on conversations with Erica Cohen, our group understood Hunter, Connecticut and Pittsburgh to be the lead organizations in the national network. As noted earlier, we decided that expanding that network was going to be one of our main focus points this semester, since it seemed a good first step in reinvigorating the network and because it gave each one of us in the project a clear task. Initial outreach to Connecticut and Pittsburgh showed that these other schools had not continued or resuscitated the work as Hunter did. Therefore, Hunter unintentionally or by default could be conceived of as the lead, or at least most active, organization of the coalition. Although Connecticut and Pittsburgh did not appear to be active, Hunter still considered them to be lead organizations.
In conducting outreach, we found that people from other macro-level programs were enthusiastic about the project and did want to keep in touch with us as our work progressed. We had not created any strict goals regarding the number of schools or people we hoped to have join the network. Initially, we intended just to discover if there was any interest or new allies. Moving into the Fall semester, we will view these interested parties as our allies.
The network has no traditional opposition or competition that we were aware of. However, we of course experienced many dilemmas that come with being a lead organization within a coalition. The communication, continuity, and collaboration challenged us especially since time and prior lack of connection to the other schools were important factors. Upon reviewing the work of Okamoto (2001), we understand this is a natural complexity of coalition work that involves people in different geographical locations and across different periods in time.
Again, we now realize that it was problematic for us to have not asked the other two schools to participate in our decision-making. It was not a mindful omission, but one it seems the Hunter group made on a strategic level. By not concentrating on or omitting collaboration, we may have been able to focus our work, conduct more outreach, and gain a better understanding of the coalition. Nonetheless, I think we all agreed that moving forward we should be more mindful on how to engage with and be inclusive of all the groups historically involved with the network.
Our Roles within the Campaign
When we met with Professor Mizrahi, initially, she asked the group to sort out our roles and responsibilities. Shortly after our first meeting with her and Erica Cohen the nine of us had our first meeting. In fact we had several meetings and our first meeting really set the tone for the campaign. First, we knew our time for this campaign was limited. In the first meeting it was important for us to agree on what we will and will not be addressing during this campaign. This “is the bedrock on which our eventual [results] will be evaluated” (Burghardt, 2011, p.40). The biggest decision made in the first meeting was where the focus of this campaign would be. There was a unanimous consensus to continue our focus on outreach and building relationships with other programs.
Additionally in our first meeting, the group decided not to select a facilitator for this session; the option of selecting one for future meetings was left open. Christina Stang chose the role of liaison to Professor Mizrahi and Zuhira Ahmad is our liaison with Erica Cohen. Because we are all very busy people, we began looking for the most effective way to keep in touch and exchange information. We use emails and Google docs to stay connected and to compile material for the campaign.
Allison Weingarten created our first document, which was a list of the thirty programs to contact throughout the campaign with all of the schools’ current contact information. Each group member was able to access the document and abstract four to five schools to contact. Cheryl Taruc took on the role of creating our script to be used to contact the school via email and telephone.
Another major role are the note takers in the group. Nancy Simmons and Renée Council chose the role of note takers during our meetings. The notes were very comprehensive and they were posted on Blackboard in our campaign discussion section.
Google technology was an important part of our campaign. “In 1990, Google was neither a powerful web search engine nor a verb used by people seeking information” (Burghardt, 2011, p45). In comparison to the 1990’s, today’s Internet technology offered an enormous opportunity for us to collect and compile relatively accurate hard data on each of the social work schools. Because of this accessibility, we were able to spend more time contacting the schools rather than spending our time searching for the school’s information.
Each of us had different roles and our common role was to make sure we all stayed in communication throughout the entire campaign. Tasks were met as needed. The decision-making powers of the group remained shared among all of the members (Staples 2004). Professor Mizrahi was made aware of all of the groups’ decisions though the group’s liaison.
Leadership Strategies and Styles
As Professor Mizrahi noted, our group had a shared leadership approach (class discussion, May 15, 2012) throughout the campaign. Rather than having a designated leader, people within our group stepped forward to take on responsibilities according to their interests and/or abilities. At our second meeting, we initially discussed the idea of establishing roles, as previously noted. We also discussed whether or not we should designate a facilitator to initiate meetings and keep group discussions on track. As we have mentioned, we did not decide on a formal group leader, but rather took on informal leadership in various specific tasks.
By not designating a leader, the group created a space where everyone had equal voice and opportunity to contribute in the group; no one person’s contributions in meetings or written work held more authority or value than another’s. In this sense, our leadership approach was reminiscent of the non-hierarchical framework used in feminist organizing (Pyles, 2009, p.71). Our desire for non-competitive inclusiveness—to make room for all nine members to make meaningful contributions to the campaign—further speaks to the feminist framework. We each had the opportunity to initiate action and be the face (or rather, the voice) of the campaign when conducting outreach to our respective schools. That we were able to select which schools to contact, and suggest and/or take on other tasks that spoke to us, rather than doing something that was merely assigned, engendered a strong sense of buy-in (Pyles, 2009) and agency (Freire, 1993).
We continued to use this shared leadership approach for the duration of our campaign. Over the course of the last two months, different members suggested meeting dates and times via email, which the rest of the group responded to, and set up separate meetings with Professor Mizrahi and Erica. If group members were unable to attend meetings, another group member would either volunteer to personally bring them up to speed, or the person would simply consult the meeting minutes, which were posted on Blackboard and/or emailed out to the entire group. Through brainstorming and discussion, we collectively determined and refined our campaign goals, what information and materials we needed to conduct outreach and possible next steps for the group and campaign. We used the meeting minutes as a group record to ensure that all tasks had been accounted for and accurately recorded; Renée initially categorized this as the “resolutions” section. The group collectively established deadlines for work submission, and communicated with each other if and when issues arose in meeting said deadlines.
The Campaign’s Effectiveness
In terms of effectiveness and how success is measured, in regards to the campaign, this is a matter of opinion. Former, current, and future students involved in the project, will have taken on various roles in its development. They will have experienced their own progress and project setbacks. Therefore, each annual CO student group that signs on to take this project will measure their own success in the overall creation of the CO network.
The project was initiated back in October of 2011. The original student members were successful. Their success is measured by the fact that a video conference took place where both the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Connecticut agreed to keep the conversation going and establish a national collaborative to link all organizing students to this network. Out of that, the project’s website was born. The purpose of the site is to connect schools and students interested in community organizing programs and to share not only ideas, but ways in which we as the student body could assist one another.
Much of the success thus far, is attributed to the hard work and commitment from former project leaders, like Erica Cohen and Professor Mizrahi. As far as our groups’ involvement and dynamic was concerned, we naturally selected shared-leadership roles, following a women-centered model of organizing. Each member had equal responsibility, say and vote as to what was expected, discussed and agreed upon. This lead to a seamless and organic transition from last year’s students. Some of us have even committed to take this project on next year, and see it through for another term.
Another measurable success factor was our communication and organizational tools. Much of our groups’ communication was via the Internet. In the past, students have engaged in video conference calls with other schools to establish lines of communication. The projects’ website is another useful tool which, unfortunately, has been less utilized than we had hoped. It continues to have great potential, considering how human connectedness has evolved with the use of the Internet.
The website has not been a great success at this point, but it is an area that should be of focus as we move forward. Re-booting the website and strengthening our connections with participating schools’ faculty and students should be top priorities. Time limitations and student commitment may hinder these objectives. This is one of the biggest obstacles truncating the project’s success. Without the student body committed and actively engaged in the process of this network, the invested efforts of all will be a measurable waste.
Moving forward and seeing where this project can lead us, lies in the steps we take from this point on. The success of the project and its potential benefits depend on it. Therefore, part of our group’s work is to build on what has already been started, and to help incoming community organizing students do the same. Building on new ideas, evolving as a group and connecting with one another remains the ultimate objective.
Works Cited
Boehm, A., & Staples, L. (2005). Grassroots leadership in task-oriented groups: Learning from successful leaders. Social Work With Groups, 28(2), 77-96.
Burghardt, S. (2011). Macro practice in social work for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Fellin, P. (2001). The community and the social worker. Itasca, IL: Peacock.
Fisher, R. (1994). Let the people decide: Neighborhood organizing in America. New York: Twayne Publishers.
Fisher, R. & Corciullo, D. (2011). Rebuilding community organizing education in social work. Journal of Community Practice, 19(4), 355-368.
Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum Press.
Krishna, M.V. (2011). Think local, act global: A case-example of 21st-century macro practice through the power of social networking. In S. Burghardt (Ed.) Macro practice in social work for the 21st century. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Okamoto, S. (2001). Interagency collaboration with high risk gang youth. Child and
Adolescent Social Work Journal, 18(1), 5-19.
Pyles, L. (2009). Progressive community organizing: A critical approach for a globalizing world. New York, NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.
Rubin & Rubin (2008). Models for implementing progressive social change. In Community organizing & development (4th ed.), Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing, 33-58.
Sen, R. (2003). Chapter 1: New realities: integrated strategies. In Stir it up: Lessons in community organizing & advocacy, 1 - 23. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
Smock, K. (2004). Democracy in action: Community organizing & urban change. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Staples, L. (2004). Roots to power: A manual for grassroots organizing (2nd ed.). Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.
11/1/2011
Thank you for visiting the blog. Members of the student advisory committee posts on this blog to inform students in community organizing programs around the world about the work that is being done in their communities, and interesting community organizing efforts in their area. We hope you will comment and join the conversation! If you have an idea for a blog post, please contact the Student Advisory Board or the representative from your school (contact information is on the "About" page.
Erica, Hunter