Campus Camp Wellstone is a 1.5 day training program held on college and university campuses around the country. Our program is non-partisan, and welcomes both seasoned activists and those who are completely new to progressive activism.
We focus on very concrete skills, like the nitty-gritty of campaign planning, grassroots organizing, and message development. We also teach students how to successfully recruit and retain volunteers and develop new leadership.
Campus Camp Wellstone is both serious and exciting-serious because you'll walk away with skills and tools for real-world campaigns, and exciting because it's interactive & exercise-based, vibrant, and led by young trainers. Our trainers are leaders in community organizing, labor, and non-profit organizations.
Camps are usually co-hosted by a mixture of student groups, student government and academic departments, and each has between 40-60 participants.
Students in Campus Camps learn:
- The Wellstone philosophy of community and electoral politics
- Understanding power
- Power Mapping & Strategic campaign planning
- How to move a message
- How to work with the media (creative and traditional strategies)
- Motivating and mobilizing people for action
- Building relationships for long-term organizing
- Recruiting and retaining volunteers/members
- Leadership development
We teach our curriculum through a case study campaign, allowing students to apply the skills as they learn, as well as incorporate current issues on campuses into examples & exercises.
Session Descriptions (in no particular order):
Introduction (45 minutes)
TheIntroduction is focused on building a sense of community among trainingparticipants, finding commonality across issues and values, and introducing Paul Wellstone's life and legacy.
Power and Politics the WellstoneWay (1 hour, 10 minutes)
This interactivesession introduces the concept of "building power" as the means to make change; distinguishes between personal, collective and institutional power; and presentsthe "Wellstone Triangle" model forsocial change, bringing together grassroots organizing, public policy andelectoral politics.
Leadership Development (1 hour, 5 minutes)
Leadership development is hugely important to building a progressive community that can WIN-especially among students who turnover constantly. This session delves into positive and negative leadership qualities and behaviors, discusses the importance ofmultiple kinds of leadership, and introduces concrete strategies forintentional leadership development.
Grassroots Organizing (1 hour, 15 minutes)
All good organizing is based on strong relationships. In this session participants go deep into what it means to build relationships based on common interests, issues and values, and practice doing "one-on-ones" as a relationship-building tool.
Membership Development (1 hour, 10 minutes)
This session focuses on how to buildstrong relationships, recruit, and organizations that support that development of a whole group of people. Structured around the concepts of "building capacity, building structure and building community" we use participants' life experiences to come up with guiding principles for membership development.
Grassroots Messaging (3 hours-can be cut to 2 hours)
This session is broken into two pieces. The first focuses on developing a strong message-taking structure, connection and creativity into account - by looking at videos and written messages as examples. Students practice writing strong messages and work in small groups to develop a radio ad about theircampaign. The second half of the session focuses on concrete ways to use a message to get people to act, practicing developing different "hooks" for different audiences, and going door knocking with a script.
Strategic Planning (2 hours, 30 minutes)This intense, challenging session demystifies planning, and teaches power analysisas the basis for all successful campaign plans. Participants spend the bulk ofthe time working through a case study to identify targets, map power relationships, develop a strategy and put together a grassroots campaign plan.
Grassroots Lobbying (1 hour, 20 minutes)
The Grassroots Lobbying session talks about the relationship between public policy, advocacy and lobbying, and shares strategies for being an effective grassroots lobbyist. Participants spend the bulk of this session in small groups, developing and practicing lobby visits with decision-makers who are supportive, undecided and opposed to a particular issue.
Closing Session: Organizingas a Lifelong Commitment (30 minutes)
In the closing session we talk about organizing as a career or a lifelong commitment, share resources for getting/staying involved, share individual commitments to social change and gather inspiration for moving forward.