COMMUNITY CHANGEMAKERS
BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN COMMUNITIES
Photo by Dario Pichini
Are you a community organisation working to support and empower people in your local area or across the world?
Or a social prescriber looking for new ways to engage people in activities?
Our Community ChangeMaker training programme gives community leaders the skills to drive impactful transformation from the grassroots up so you can take your organisation to the next level!
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Whether you are volunteering or a professional team working with people in your community, our framework and methodology will support you to find the best way to help people feel safe, welcome and included, while ensuring you don’t burn out in the process.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
- MARGARET MEAD
As with all our ChangeMaker Programmes, we’ll support you to think on three levels:
Me - the needs of the individual
We - the needs of the group
Us - the needs of the wider community
As the programme progresses there will be opportunities to expand the experience to include community members in the process and to develop ideas for shared leadership.
The basic programme builds in three modular stages.
STAGE ONE: SAFETY
HOW TO SHOW UP
Stage One combines theory with practical tools for volunteering, befriending and teaching. We introduce our philosophy and six-part framework which helps individuals understand and manage their own responses to challenging situations so
they can show up more effectively for others.
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Recognise and regulate overwhelm and trauma
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Communicate effectively under stress
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Work in diverse teams
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Use our unique methodology to become resilient self-managers
Stage One can be taken as a stand alone training for teams that are interested in integrating a trauma informed approach into their current activities, but are not ready to start developing new activities
or projects.
STAGE TWO: BELONGING
HOW TO SHARE
Now you've learned how to show up, Stage Two will teach you how to use the Human Hive framework to design shared learning experiences as the foundation for building meaningful relationships. Using our Patchwork Education model we will teach you a template to transform any skill into an inclusive activity and turn you into dynamic facilitators, ready to share your skills with others.
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Design activities that are inclusive, safe and skills-building
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Create activity plans and facilitator notes
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Create multi-session events and projects with other participants
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Plan an event to try out your new skills
All activities are designed to follow the self- regulation cycle of the nervous system, under the categories Eat, Make and Play. You will learn how to recognise which activities are best to support the wellbeing of the people you work with and how to co-create full projects together.
STAGE THREE: PURPOSE
HOW TO TAKE ACTION
Now it's time to take your new activities out into the community. Stage Three is a community event where you get the opportunity to try out your activities with real people. We'll work with you to find the right location to make your event as accessible as possible to the people you want to reach and support you to make it a success.
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Learn to set up and manage your own event
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Run your activities in an emotionally and psychologically safe environment
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Learn to lead and support a range of different activities
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Complete a full debrief and evaluation of the experience
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Full support and feedback from the Human Hive team
Stage Three can be a stand alone event, or the start of a longer project responding to the needs you encounter. We will support you to co-create next steps with your participants and ensure that everyone is empowered to contribute to its success.
Our training has been designed to empower people of all ages. Once your support team is trained you will be ready to support some of your participants to take the training themselves, learning essential life skills that will help them build the confidence they need to move forward into self directed, independent lives.
The goal of any community focused project should be to hand over leadership as capacity grows. We will work with you to adapt our training to fit your context, so that you can start building that capacity in your participants.
We can adapt our materials to include diverse groups from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Talk to us about your needs and we will work with you to develop an appropriately accessible experience.
The Human Hive will support you as part of an ongoing journey until you feel ready to walk
forward on your own.
HOW TO FUND THE TRAINING
We understand that for small organisations finding the funds to commit to training can be challenging. We never want lack of budget to come between you and essential skills development for you and your team. Here are a couple of ways you can use our training to build community and generate funds for your organisation at the same time.
ONE
Share training and costs between a few local partners to develop a community of practice in which everyone learns and grows together.
Community groups come into contact with many different people and organisations, all with their own language, procedures and policies, which can be confusing and disempowering. Use this training to bring everyone together to create an interconnected community around you, using the same language and frameworks, making inter-organisational conversations and support easier for everyone.
TWO
Use the training as a fundraising opportunity. You have up to 30 places to fill:
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Auction off places to donors
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Enact a "pay it forward" policy
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Add an extra donation to the places you sell - and make back the training costs and more.
We will take our fee, you can keep the rest. Don't forget, if appropriate, you can also use your Stage Three event as a fundraiser, as well as any future events you put on using the activities you create during the training.
CASE STUDY: LOOP-LA-LOOP
In July 2017 The Human Hive's mobile Crisis Classroom visited the towns of Sarteano and Cetona in Tuscany to bring local Italians and migrants together to share skills. A hostel in Cetona had been repurposed as an asylum seeker residence, and was full of young West African men with nothing to do and no connection to the local community. Up until our arrival the two groups had not found a way to meaningfully interact but bringing everyone together for a joint training was just the thing needed to build some new relationships.
As a consequence of that event, a group of local Italians and 9 young West African men, formed to learn crochet so they could make hats as the weather grew colder. They called themselves Loop-la-Loop. You can find out more about them here (link to Loop La Loop ChangeMaker page)
Watch their first activity event as it happened:
