Effective Civic Leadership for Youth and Young Adults

The Calgary Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) is an alliance of 30 community organizations. CACG has been training community leaders to effectively engage in local democratic process for over a decade. These leaders have used these skills to have over $ 6 billion in social impact. The heart of this training is a 9-hour workshop titled "The Foundations of Community Organizing," which is supported by ongoing mentorship of participants who become involved in CACG’s work. 

Through our member organizations, we have met many young people who are passionate about addressing the social issues they see around them. We have also heard that many young people are seeking ways to be more engaged in civic life in ways that are more impactful than what they have experienced. The youth who have taken our training have identified both the value of the training CACG offers and the need to adapt this training into a version that is specifically oriented towards youth and young adults.  

This project will be to: 1) Adapt “Foundations of Community Organizing” training for youth and young adults and pilot this new training; 2) To actively identify 25 youth and young adults to participate in the adapted training; 3) To provide ongoing mentorship to these youth as they use the skills they learn; 4) To use this process to refine this training so that it can continue to be offered into the future. 

The Foundations of Community Organizing training teaches valuable leadership skills that include: 

• Relational Meetings (1-1’s and small groups)

• The tension between the “World As It Is,” and the “World As It Should Be”

• Understanding Power, and the difference between “Power Over” vs. “Relational Power”

• The Organizing Cycle of: Listening, Discerning, Planning, Acting and Evaluating

• Breaking down broad problems into actionable solutions (issues)

• Power analysis 

• Creating effective public actions

• The power of ongoing evaluation

In 2023, we demonstrated that teaching youth these skills can result in youth leading real change. We worked with a group of grade four students and their parents on a campaign to get a crosswalk built across 14th Street near William Reid School, where, on numerous occasions, students were almost hit by cars. The campaign not only resulted in having the crosswalk built (see photo of some of the kids involved using their crosswalk), but it also started a process by which the City committed $40 million to walking safety around schools in Calgary.