Applications closed for 2024

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Description

The Community Organizing for Climate Justice Program seeks to equip leaders with a climate justice framework and practical tools to implement team-based climate resiliency projects in their communities. A three-day online training followed by 12 weeks of weekly coaching and leadership development, will allow program participants to understand themselves as leaders, expand their capacity to enroll others in collective action, and understand the roles of teams in creating change.  

The program is a good fit for community leaders who wish to equip themselves better for climate justice work. Staff, leaders, or board members from faith-based organizations, recent seminary graduates, faith leaders, and representatives of congregations are good candidates for this program. 

The course is online and will take place during the spring semester of 2024 (February 7- May 9). 

Timeframe

• First training session (online):  February 7, 8, & 9, 2024
• Twelve weeks of online mentored practice: February 12 – May 3, 2024
• Second training (online) session: May 9, 2024

Instructors

Community Organizing for Climate Justice as Love in Action is taught be Via Consulting Cooperative. Via Consulting Cooperative is a collective of evaluators, faith leaders,  and community organizers with over 50 years combined experience in community organizing and both qualitative and quantitative participatory program evaluation in community development, education, and faith-based contexts.

As long time leaders in communities affected by racialized capitalism, members of our collective have done the work of local level response and disaster preparedness and have led both climate justice campaigns  – connecting stormwater management to green jobs, green new deal for housing and climate action in community – CR boxes, measuring air quality. 

Maureen Okasinski  

Maureen integrates academic rigor with practical, community-led practices in her work.  She has 20 years experience in leadership, program development, research, design and evaluation, grant writing and management, budget management, and direct practice. This includes nine years of social work teaching, fourteen years of social work practice and six years in consulting. She currently teaches at the University of Michigan, where she earned an MSW 

Meghan Sobocienski

Meghan is a Co-Founder and  Director of Grace in Action Collectives in Southwest Detroit. Meghan spent five years as a Community Organizer with the PICO (Faith in Action Network), and five years working as a Co-Organizer for the Organizing for Mission Cohort (Network) through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). Through this work Meghan guided congregational leaders to utilize their land, financial, and community resources to create social justice projects in their communities. Meghan has an MDiv. from PLTS  in Berkeley CA and is an ordained Deacon in the ELCA.

Bianca Vazquez

Bianca is the Program Director at Beloved Community Incubator in Washington, DC. Neighborhood listening sessions led to her engagement with small micro-business projects with local residents, which led to the founding of BCI. Bianca is trained in community organizing by the Industrial Areas Foundation, Faith in Action Network, and Gamaliel Network. She works in Washington, DC, where she has shaped the creation of mutual aid disaster response networks and led worker campaigns for almost a decade.

Questions?

For more information please contact: