How organising principles apply beyond activism
Launch library · evergreen read
The core practices of organising, relationship building, listening, developing local leadership, are not unique to activism and apply just as well within workplaces, schools, faith communities or any other setting where a group of people wants to act together effectively toward a shared end. The setting changes, but the underlying practice does not.
Recognising this broader applicability helps explain why organising skills, once learned, tend to transfer well between very different settings, since the underlying discipline of building trust and shared capacity works much the same way regardless of the specific issue at hand. That discipline, once learned, rarely stays confined to one context.
Understanding organising as a general set of transferable skills, rather than a technique specific to campaigning, also helps explain why so many people who first learn to organise around one cause go on to apply the same skills in entirely different, unrelated parts of their lives. The skill, once earned, tends to travel widely.