Regional Advocacy and Organizing Training
Research Study
Working with researchers from the Pitt School of Social Work, Equitable and Just Greater Pittsburgh is hosting a Regional Advocacy and Organizing Training and Research Study. This project is funded by the AmeriCorps National Service and Civic Engagement Research Project to work with residents to increase civic engagement around equity and equitable development issues.
Goals
Through this project, our Steering Committee want to:
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Develop new leaders who can advocate for their communities and connect their communities with issue advocates and resources
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Connect participants to wider-scale equity and justice conversations, advocates, and resources.
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Connect participants with residents from other communities.
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Change and improve policies, practices, or programs related to equity, justice, and equitable development that affect communities across Allegheny County.
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Lift up participants’ and community groups’ existing work
What will participants be asked to do?
This project has two main parts:
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Advocacy and organizing training sessions: Participants will attend training sessions to learn about the importance of community advocacy, some core organizing skills, the Allegheny County political landscape, and various topics, such as affordable housing. Experienced advocates and organizers from the EJGP network will share their wisdom with the participants.
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Project implementation: During the training, participants will identify an issue that affects all of their communities. In this part of the project, participants will be asked to work together to improve that issue by advocating for positive changes to policies, programs, or practices.
Participants will also be invited to attend EJGP full network and cross-community network meetings during the training and project implementation.
Year 1 (Current)
Our first group of training participants have completed the Advocacy and Organizing training sessions and are on to the project implementation phase! Over the next six months, participants will be using their skills to address a regional housing issue and providing their communities with information about housing rights and resources. During that time, they’ll be working with experienced housing advocates to design and implement the project.
Year 2 (spring 2024)
We are happy to announce that we have received funding from AmeriCorps to run this training a second time! We will begin recruiting our next set of participants in spring 2024. We will have more details about applying as we get closer to spring.