Real World Experience in Organizing....And Structures of Oppression!! - Field Organizer Change Corps Employee Review

As 2016 alumni, I wholly believe the time I spent working at Change Corps are the building blocks for my career in organizing and political action. The three steps of the program include training, campaign work, finished with lifelong job referrals for Change Corps graduates. Through working in this model, you start with learning and you finish with doing. And you're working on some of the most important and urgent issues. During my time I worked to pressure corporations to adopt better enviro policies, save the ACA, fight against the global gag rule, protect Planned Parenthood, and register people to vote in communities of color. My cohort are some of the best people I know, to this day. They're all doing awesome things after graduation, all across the country. From environmental advocacy to election work, or working in education reform.

While it's not really a "con" to the organization, there are reasons why working for Change Corps isn't right for everyone. And they're upfront about it. They work as a partnership, not a democracy, meaning they prioritize input from people who have the most experience. They pride themselves on being thrifty (you share hotel rooms, sometimes beds). And organizing is inherently hard work, especially in the response style organizing Change Corps does. But if you are committed to making change happen, Change Corps is the best place to start as an entry level organizer. Learn a lot, make great friends, do good work. Then after a year, you'll pretty much graduate with three years of organizing experience.

-I came out of cc with a lot of confidence on basic building blocks of activism. I'm not the most extroverted person, and I was definitely a bit short on confidence about cold calling people on the phone or flagging them down on the street at the start of the year. Now I've done it enough times that it doesn't scare me, and I know I'm good at it. -I know a playbook now for running an organizing campaign. I'm not going to run every campaign I do exactly the way I ran my cc campaigns, but just having that template in place is something to work off of. I can legitimately tell people that I know how to set up and run my own campaign.

-Remember when I said I wasn't the most extroverted person? I had to do a lot of things that didn't come naturally to me. It was hard, and a lot of the time I didn't enjoy it as I was doing it. -The hours can be really demanding, and it's hard to leave the job at the office. You're always thinking about it.