Presenters Katie Bartolotta of PennFuture and Michael Roles of Clean Water Action lead a brainstorming activity around a hypothetical animal rights/environmental degradation scenario to explain how to build coalitions. My big take-away was when they introduced the Theory of Change.
The Center for Theory of Change explains it thusly:
Theory of Change is essentially a comprehensive description and illustration of how and why a desired change is expected to happen in a particular context. It is focused in particular on mapping out or “filling in” what has been described as the “missing middle” between what a program or change initiative does (its activities or interventions) and how these lead to desired goals being achieved.
It can essentially be reduced to a statement, almost a Mad Libs of activism. If (blank) then (blank) because (blank). Katie and Mike ran through the hypothetical scenario for the group, then we broke into teams and picked an environmental issue specific to Philadelphia that we wanted to tackle.
First we identified a target of our activism--who we wanted to persuade or convince to act. Then, we brainstormed influencers who might be interested in spreading our word or otherwise getting involved. Then, we drafted our theory of change statement.
IF we convince bike riders in Philadelphia, community groups, schools and universities, bike coalitions, and environmental groups to petition the Mayor for improved pedestrian and bicycle access to paths,
THEN rights-of-way for pedestrians and bicyclists will be incorporated into urban planning by the city and there will be fewer injuries of bicyclists by motorized vehicles,
BECAUSE bicycle access is an important measure of quality of life, quality of life is a campaign issue, and the Mayor wants to be re-elected.
At first it seemed a little silly to stop and write a sentence as obvious as this one--I'm a very get-to-the-point kind of person and taking time to write a statement that connects a proposed course of action with the expected outcome and reason why seems like an exercise in stating the obvious. However, when you are leading or coordinating the efforts of a newly-formed group of people, taking time to brainstorm each of these factors separately and then boiling it all down to a theory of change statement such as the one above can help make sure that everyone is on the same page with regards to the group's purpose and direction.
From the Center for Theory of Change:
[Theory of Change] is focused in particular on mapping out or “filling in” what has been described as the “missing middle” between what a program or change initiative does (its activities or interventions) and how these lead to desired goals being achieved. It does this by first identifying the desired long-term goals and then works back from these to identify all the conditions (outcomes) that must be in place (and how these related to one another causally) for the goals to occur.
I see valuable applications with project and change management, and I look forward to applying this theory in my coursework at Temple.
The State of Young Philadelphia symposium was what Katie and Mike called "Activism 101:" the basest of outlines on how to go about organizing people to incite change in society at large. A brainstorming meeting such as our hypothetical one might stretch over 3 days of meetings at an organization such as theirs. Even if the presentation was only cursory, I still feel that learning about the Theory of Change was a great take-away. Thanks to PennFuture, Clean Water Action, and Temple University for supporting State of a Young Philly 2015!
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