Systems Change Workshops
- Everyday Heroes and Heroines
- Self-Advocacy: Freedom, Equality, and Justice for All
- The Power of Working Together (The Remembering with Dignity Story)
- Spiral Model of Community Organizing
- Lessons and Influences of Other Movements
- The Little Red Hen: How Community Organizing Builds Leadership
- Meet SAM: Self-Advocates Minnesota
- Reach for the Power Switch: How Ordinary People Can Use Power to Make Change
- Struggling for Our Rights
- Self-Advocacy Bingo
- Leading From the Middle: Developing Leadership for Your Group
- Common Vision
- Self-Advocacy: A Crash Course for Service Providers
- Music for Social Change
1. Everyday Heroes and Heroines
Join self-advocates and allies for a discussion and participatory exercises on what it means to be a leader. This session will include activities to identify leaders, find traits common to these leaders, and recognize these same traits in ourselves and others. Together we will:
- See that we can develop the qualities that we admire and look up to in others
- Share our "heroes" and "heroines" with the group and tell why we think they are leaders
- Use ACT's popular "Qualities Necklaces" to recognize others for their leadership qualities and be recognized for the qualities we have (fun and meaningful exercise)
- Identify our leaders in the disability rights movement
2. Self-Advocacy: Freedom, Equality, and Justice for All
Is self-advocacy really a civil rights movement? Discover the connections between self-advocacy and the broader social justice movements, including Gay Liberation, the Women's Movement, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s, and the larger disability rights movement. With an award-winning video featuring writer, performer, and activist Cheryl Marie Wade, this program weaves together song, archival footage, photographs, and interviews to show how society looks at disability and the role self-advocates can play in shaping their futures. No longer hidden away in institutions, individuals with developmental disabilities are now advocating for themselves and others, demanding freedom, equality, and justice for all people.
- See self-advocacy as a civil rights movement
- Learn concrete strategies for moving issues into action
- Join the civil rights movement for people with developmental and other disabilities.
- See award-winning documentary that educates and inspires
3. The Power of Working Together (The Remembering with Dignity Story)
Sometimes, a terrible wrong can motivate a group to take action, get organized and make change. That's what happened in Minnesota in 1994, when some folks with disabilities discovered an institution cemetery with numbered graves. Those graves told a terrible story, but what these folks did with this information is a story of hope. Please come to this inspiring workshop, where you'll hear these people's story, learn their five-step method for taking action, and explore how this method can work for your group as well, building your group's leadership as you solve your own problems. Don't miss this powerful opportunity.
4. Spiral Model of Community Organizing
Community organizing is a process that builds self-advocacy skills and leadership naturally. This session combines PowerPoint presentation and video showing how community organizing has advanced self-advocacy. Work in small groups to discuss ideas, practice skills and deepen your understanding of organizing as a means of effective self-advocacy. Session includes:
- An overview of historical issues within the Parents Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, the Migrant Farm Workers Movement, the Disability Rights Movement, and the Self-Advocacy Movement, all showing the progression from individual problems to group solutions
- An introduction to the Spiral Model of Organizing, developed by the Doris Marshall Institute in Canada to create change and build leadership capacity through organizing
- Exercises on choosing the right issues for your organization
5. Lessons and Influences of Other Movements
There is much we can learn from other communities fighting for civil and human rights. Join Advocating Change Together to make connections between our struggles and those of the Parents Movement, the Civil Rights Movement and the Migrant Farm Workers Movement. Identify lessons and influences from other social change movements and apply these insights to the work we are doing today in self-advocacy. A must for individuals and groups who promote disability as an emerging civil rights movement and want to learn ideas that lead to real social change on the grassroots level.
6. The Little Red Hen: How Community Organizing Builds Leadership
Opportunities are growing for people with disabilities and families to be involved in systems change. Everyone seems to need leaders to serve on their advisory committees. But here's the question. "Who will help me spend hours, days and years building this leadership?" said the Little Red Hen. "Not I," said the dog. "Not I," said the ....
Folk tales have a lot to teach the self-advocacy movement. The Hen's scratching has revealed too much representation and not enough true partnerships or collaborative work. Her solution: build leadership through organizing. And get the dog and the cat to pitch in.
Join disability rights activists and community organizers to learn how to build leadership. This jam-packed session includes a skit, a song, a necklace, a quiz, a step-by-step organizing model, a tug-of-war, and a homework assignment. You will leave this session with concrete strategies for building sustained leadership. You may arrive as a dog, but you'll leave as a hen.
7. Meet SAM: Self-Advocates Minnesota
Come to this session to learn about a new network of people and groups working to make self-advocacy stronger in Minnesota. It's called the SAM network. SAM stands for Self-Advocates Minnesota. It's exciting because SAM will help groups across the state get money to support the work of self-advocacy. SAM will also give groups tools they need to get the work done. AND … SAM will help us get and stay connected, both to learn from each other and to share ideas. Don't miss this chance to meet founding members of SAM and find out how your group can join.
SAM is for everyone! All self-advocacy groups across the state of Minnesota will benefit from this network. Your first step is to find out how to join. Once you join the network, you will get tools and resources you want and need to do the work. Calling all self-advocacy groups large and small. This session is a MUST for any group that is serious about making self-advocacy stronger in every region of the great state of Minnesota. Together we are stronger!
8. Reach for the Power Switch: How Ordinary People Can Use Power to Make Change
One of the main goals of the self-advocacy movement is self-determination and choice – "I decide what's best for me." Unfortunately, self-advocates are often thwarted when pursuing this goal. Why? The short answer is "power." They lack the power to get what they want. Instead they find themselves up against systems and/or individuals with superior power.
Using this new knowledge, participants will explore the power of working with each other and believing in themselves. Participants will feel empowered as they:
- Learn to recognize-- through interactive movement and group discussion -- the three kinds of power and how they work
- Use role-play scenarios to practice ways of increasing their power in everyday situations
- Analyze video clips showing successful uses of the different types of power
- Practice small-scale ways to get more power
- Rethink how power affects or could affect parts of their lives
9. Struggling for Our Rights
Do people with disabilities need to be changed to fit into society? Or does society need to change to accommodate all people? Come to this workshop and you'll begin to see disability from a civil rights perspective. Along the way you'll find out what happened 40 years ago that started the disability rights revolution. Together we'll practice the skills of demanding dignity and respect, and celebrate the movement that's sweeping the nation – the self-advocacy movement.
10. Self-Advocacy Bingo
Calling all Bingo players. At next month's meeting, we'll be playing Self-Advocacy Bingo. "What's that?," you say. Well, first of all, it's Bingo, so it's fun, includes everyone and is loaded with prizes. And there's a bonus: as you play Self-Advocacy Bingo, you learn about disability history and self-advocacy. You won't want to miss this happening. Please join us for Bingo. (Note: ACT offers three editions: Self-Advocacy Bingo, Community Organizing Bingo, and Leadership Bingo.)
11. Leading From the Middle: Developing Leadership for Your Group
Within the self-advocacy movement, people with disabilities are demanding the right to be in charge of their lives, to make their own decisions. This right extends to leadership. Shared leadership is a core value of self-advocacy: it involves drawing out the gifts of each person. Developing shared leadership makes a self-advocacy group strong. In this workshop, you will learn from the wisdom of contemporary social change leaders of grassroots organizations. Video interviews provide a springboard for guided discussion activities. Fun exercises then guide the group to notice and name leader qualities within each other and to build their own definitions of leadership. Participants are empowered to see themselves as able contributors to their group's leadership needs.
12. Common Vision
Common Vision is an extended leadership training program that builds knowledge and creates sustainable leadership within the disability community. Participants include self-advocates, service providers, parents, professionals, and other allies, all working together to create a shared vision of the future. Through highly participatory lessons in history, community organizing, issue identification, and leadership skills, participants discover their own power and learn methods for creating change in their communities. Since 1995, Common Vision has been helping strengthen the self-advocacy movement by training leaders who understand not only the skills of individual self-advocacy, but also how to organize for systems change.
Common Vision is based on the premise that lasting self-advocacy is only developed when individuals work together in groups to identify and address issues of common concern. Through the careful process of issue organizing, self-advocates naturally develop the leadership skills necessary to effect change, while also building the size and strength of their groups. Without a grassroots approach to systems change, most self-advocacy groups have had trouble moving beyond the stage of being a social club in which others (parents, professionals) decide their direction.
13. Self-Advocacy: A Crash Course for Service Providers
Since 1994, Advocating Change Together (ACT) has hosted dozens of two-day sessions on self-advocacy called Common Vision. The gatherings use highly participatory lessons in history, community organizing, and skill building to help self-advocates discover their own power and learn methods for working together to create change. While these gatherings are very popular and well attended by people with developmental disabilities, service providers often find it difficult to make the two-day commitment.
The good news is that ACT has now condensed the basic components of the Common Vision program. We've developed a new three-hour presentation designed specifically for professionals. The session was piloted--and very well received--at the Elizabeth Boggs Lecture series in New Jersey. One participant commented, "This was the best session I have attended." Another said, "Excellent. Hats off to ACT!"
Join disability rights activists from Advocating Change Together for a crash course in self-advocacy. Learn how the self-advocacy movement has three components: personal empowerment, a new way of understanding disability and working together to change society. This jam-packed session includes a skit, a song, a hen, a necklace, a quiz, a step-by-step organizing model, a tug-of-war and homework assignments. You will leave this session with concrete strategies for supporting and building the self-advocacy movement in Minnesota. Don't miss it.
14. Music for Social Change
Music for Social Change is about the power of group singing-- a day of singing and songwriting designed to energize people working in the self-advocacy movement. Led by experienced song leaders and organizers, participants come together to sing songs from other civil rights struggles and create new songs that capture the spirit of our struggles for self-advocacy.
In the morning, song leaders lead the group in singing powerful songs from various civil rights struggles.
After lunch, small groups break off to write songs (facilitated by a song leader/presenter.) Each group chooses a theme that was discussed earlier in the day (such as civil rights, self-advocacy, working together, personal responsibility and voting) and works together to come up with a new song. Each group then performs and teaches their song to the large group.
After wrapping up by singing some old favorites, the group disperses, invigorated by a whole day of group singing and the wonderful atmosphere of camaraderie and joyful determination that has emerged.