One of the most vital ways we sustain ourselves is by building communities of resistance, places where we know we are not alone. 

–  bell hooks

Over the years, communities of resistance have shaped and propelled countless movements for social and political change. These movements have been a source of immeasurable good, contributing significantly to changing narratives, inspiring action, and offering hope. Right now, humans are:

• reeling from a deadly (and still active) pandemic, 
• existentially threatened by a climate crisis of our own making, 
• reckoning with centuries of brutal treatment of people in the global majority,
• grieving through continual warfare and mass violence,
• grappling with technologies that hijack our attention and construct alternate reality, 
• polarizing politically and becoming ever more estranged from each other, and
• witnessing the abuse of power, erosion of integrity, narrowing of rights and deterioration of democracy, often under minoritarian rule.  

As we try to make sense of this difficult moment and navigate its myriad challenges, we could use some inspiration – as well as heaps of context and lots of new skills. 

Through EcoGather, Sterling College has created a series of five online courses – Showing up for Change, Communities of Care, Culture, Coalition and Movement Building, Empathy as a Force for Social Good, and Story Justice – that offer what is most needed now and what will carry us through. These courses enliven community and movement building by setting context, teaching history and theory, and providing the tools, skills, and mindsets that community and movement building change-shapers need to deepen their practice.

Across these courses, author, speaker, and storytelling consultant Michelle Auerbach compiles and shares insights she developed through decades of movement work.  But hers is far from the only perspective on offer. An all-star cast of good troublemakers – organizers, activists, mentors and teachers – who have made their mark and reflected on what it takes to shape change lend their voices and diverse perspectives.   

The journey begins with an important and oft-overlooked opportunity to pause and consider all the parts of yourself: physical, mental, psychological, spiritual, and communal. Equipped with an understanding of who you are in movement and community space, you will then travel back through movement history over time to understand the tactics, strategies, and skills used to build community. After exploring what worked, what didn’t, and what created lasting change, you will be encouraged to apply those tools and skills to your own work and develop strategies for organizing at scale. Thereafter, you will  take time to understand the political divisions that impede coalition building for individuals and communities and develop a plan to work with other communities and individuals to make change. This one-of-a-kind experience concludes by building your capacity to use story and all of the ancillary narrative and emotional skills to make change.

These five courses can be taken individually or pursued collectively as a comprehensive connection-based training for good-trouble makers, resulting in a Certificate in Change Shaping. Together, they supply the essential tools and skills needed to build a community that is lasting and use that community for change-making coalition building.   

If you find yourself full of the rage that follows on the heels of injustice, the urgency emitted by crisis, or the roiling uncertainty of collapse, these courses will help you resist reactionary, reductive, rule-oriented, and performative responses. They will offer you an opportunity to breathe in and out, know yourself better, resource yourself deeply, revive your communities with care, enlarge your empathy, hone your offerings, and channel your energy into change shaping. 

Course Specific Learning Objectives

The specific learning objectives for the five (5) courses that make up this certificate program are as follows:

1. Showing up for Change
   • Unpack and manage the ways our own traumas and nervous systems shape who we are in community and in social movements.
2. Communities of Care 
   • Prepare learners to advocate for and build cultures of care, prosocial behavior, inclusion, diversity, problem solving, harm reduction, and joy.
3. Culture, Coalition, and Movement Building
   • Define the theory and practice of movement building
   • Honor and implement wisdom from previous and ongoing social movements
   • Clarify guiding goals, strategies, and roadblocks
4. Empathy as a Force for Social Change
   • Interrogate and leverage shared and divergent political goals to build effective coalitions
5. Story Justice 
   • Scope the potential of story as a mechanism for shaping change
   • Identify and leverage the components of transformative storytelling
   • Communicate in ways that build empathy rather than alienation

This course was created through and is part of :

Throughout this learning journey, you will hear from a diverse group of thoughtfully selected humans who share their perspectives and experiences on a wide range of topics.  They include:

• Kurt Allerslev, movement archivist at Booklyn, phytochemist, and utopian anarchist
• Med Bradbury, convener of Elderqueer and anti-diet activist
• Nicole Civita, relational food systems advocate, educator, and ethicist
• Monica Coleman, theologian, activist, and host of the Octavia Tried to Tell Us Podcast
• James Davis, community organizer for Bay Staters on psychedelic legalization, former legislative aid and international universal basic income policy advisor
• Kelly Diels, feminist culture maker
• Isabel Foxen Duke, intersectional anti-diet activist, attending to race, gender, dis/ability, and fat justice
• Fatuma Emmad, food sovereignty advocate, co-founder Frontline Farming & Project Protect Food Systems Workers
• Charles Howard, chaplain, street outreach worker to people experiencing homelessness, and author of Black Theology as Mass Movement 
• Lia Howard, political scientist working at the intersection of citizenship, dialogue, development, culture, and empathy
• Reginald Hubbard, political operative who supports activist wellness through yoga and Buddhism 
• Alan Miller, one of the earliest environmental policy advocates
• Clementine Morrigan, zine-writer, co-host of the F*cking Canceled podcast, and trauma/attachment specialist
• Claire Nelson, futurist, sustainability engineer and chief ideation leader of The Futures Forum
• Jessi Quizar, urban resources scholar and decolonial activist
• Sarah Schulman, activists, writer, and movement historian
• Sarah Watson, coastal climate and resilience specialist, community builder, and science communicator.

This certificate program, and its associated individual courses, have been designed for:

• Established and budding activists, organizers, and community leaders, and coalition-builders;
• leaders, staff, and volunteers affiliated with organizations making change within their spheres or seeking to have greater impact in the wider world;
• anyone interested in building stronger and more resilient communities;
• anyone who wants to pause and consider what is needed psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually to feel resourced and prepared to their find place and purpose in challenging times.
  

Because the courses can be completed in a self-paced manner – with the opportunity to participate in live connection sessions via video-conference – participation in the Change Shaping program is designed to be doable for busy people who juggle many responsibilities but also can’t shake the desire to do something that might make a difference.   

Learners seeking a Certificate in Change Shaping: Connection-based Training for Good Trouble Makers can complete all 5 courses asynchronously online. Over the course of a year from their date of enrollment,  participants will have access to all five courses, receive feedback on their work from trained assessors, participate in and receive peer reviews, and have the opportunity to connect in (optional) bi-weekly live sessions via Zoom.  These sessions will offer flexible space for discussion, connection, and application of course materials to current events.  They will also give learners a space to receive mentorship directly from Michelle and to meet additional good trouble makers.

The Change-Shaping learning journey starts with an examination of self, then supplies the capacities to connect with care in communities. Next, it moves through the history of movements and attends to sustaining them, bringing deep, thick empathy to them and, finally, strategizing about how to use stories and storytelling for social good. Students who enroll in the full certificate program always get access to the Showing Up for Change course free of charge because we believe it is the essential stepping stone that enables change shapers to bring their full, understood selves to the work. 

The cost to participate in the full certificate program is $3750 – a tremendous value for over 70 modules of rich content, tools, and applied activities that support the evolution of your work and impact.

Because the world needs more deeply resourced Change Shapers in this moment, Sterling is offering an amazing introductory price. Be among the first to sign up for the Change Shaping Certificate, and you can access the entire certificate for just $2750.  For this special launch – the code ShapeChange1000 will get you $1000 off the price of the program. But if you have the ability to pay full price, please consider doing so: for every 4 full price enrollments, we will offer a spot in the certificate program to an aspiring change shaper who might not otherwise be able to afford it.

Learners who need to spread their investment in this education over time may pay for the course in three installments, without incurring additional charges.  We offer this as a way to contribute to economic justice without undervaluing or resourcing our work. Payment plans are only available to those pursuing the full certificate program.  If you would like to set up a payment plan with the above schedule or a different payment schedule would make participation more feasible for you, please contact continuingeducation@sterlingcollege.edu to explore possible options. 

The core components of these courses offer a much-needed alternative to the kinds of ubiquitous and predictable diversity, equity, and inclusion training that are very well-intentioned but often alienate or fail to empower those who are subjected to them repeatedly.  Other parts supply skills and tools that enable those who’ve already engaged in the important work of unlearning to create new spaces of belonging and support the creation of a more just and equitable world. If you  are interested in making any of the Change Shaping courses or modules available to your community members, volunteers, or staff as a form of liberatory and change-oriented professional, avocational, or personal development, please contact continuingeducation@sterlingcollege.edu to discuss group rates and customized curricular packages.

Michelle Auerbach is a world builder and  community maker who uses all her geeky skills to support and educate change shapers. She works toward a  more just and loving place where more people get taken care of better. Michelle works as a consultant, educator, and writer focused on change shaping, creativity, and leadership for individuals, organizations, and communities.

Michelle has been studying change and developing her change shaping practice for over 40 years. She has worked with institutions (the NY City Department of Health, Kaiser Permanente, and The National Institutes of Health), organizations (from Fortune 50 companies to NGOs and nonprofits) and communities (through activist movements, consulting, designing change processes and facilitating), and she creates communications and storytelling strategies for universities, legislative change groups, and pro-social businesses. 

Michelle was trained in facilitation and change management as well as individual and group coaching at the Columbia University School of Public Health, Kaiser Permanente, and the New York City Department of Health as well as through movements and teachers on the ground.  She was a professor of Ancient World Languages and Humanities for a decade and served as chair of the Arts and Humanities discipline for the State of Colorado Department of Higher Education. Currently, she teaches communication and story for changemakers at The University of Colorado and Sterling College. 

Michelle was also trained as a chef in New York City at the Natural Gourmet, where she studied nutrition, Chinese medicinal cookery, and healing traditions as well as studying pastry at Peter Kump’s Institute for Culinary Education. She worked in restaurants and has done food writing for the New York Times, the London Guardian, and Sunset magazine as well as other outlets. MIchelle has a particular passion for supporting food sustainability and justice.  

Michelle’s PhD dissertation was written on story as a trauma sensitive change technology for individuals, organizations, and communities. She studies the way we respond to change from  wisdom traditions that go back 6000 years to the neurobiology that drives our connected selves. Her book, Resilience: The Life Saving Skill of Story came out in 2022 and her second book on change shaping and storytelling is due out in 2023. If you want to read her novels or her nonfiction you can find it, and more of her writing at www.michelleauerbach.com.

Enrollment provides access for one year and represents an annual commitment. There are no refunds. If you decide to stop participating in the Change Shaping: Connection-based Training for Good Trouble Makers Certificate Program or any of its component courses, you remain responsible for completing any remaining payments on your payment plan in full.  If you require an extension of time to complete the program due to unforeseen circumstances or hardship, please contact continuingeducation@sterlingcollege.edu to develop a plan to support your sustained access and successful completion.

To participate in any learning community spaces (such as discussion boards and videoconferences), you agree to follow Sterling College’s Code of Online Conduct You also agree not to reproduce or circulate proprietary materials from this program.

You agree to respect the identities, privacy, and confidentiality of other learners in this program and will not share screenshots, recordings or information disclosed in our learning community spaces with other parties. To foster a dignified, respectful, brave space and model accountability, learners who do not uphold these requirements may have their access revoked without refund.

Course descriptions are for informational purposes only. Content may be updated or changed as planning evolves.  Sterling College reserves the right to alter the program specifics, including details about course content, instructors, collaborations, field trips and facilities at any time without notice.