Education Advocacy Group in California.
OUR OBJECTIVES.
We worked with this partner to design a multi-lingual, multi-platform training curriculum for families, including culturally responsive content, training development co-design, train-the-trainer sessions with organizers, and creating a new “Organizing Library.” Additionally, we provided coaching to organizers and the management team to ensure proper integration of training modules to ongoing organizing work, including recommendations on CRM tracking and naming conventions.
OUR STRATEGY.
Iconico designed a strategy with an asset-based approach. We started with an extensive research phase focused on collecting information to identify assets, skill needs, and knowledge development. We worked closely with the community to create the training content, including families, and utilized Native Spanish speakers to ensure proper cultural interpretation. Finally, our focus became building the training capacity of the organizing team, identifying an assigned staff member to work as “Integration Manager,” who would identify organizational pain-points and ensure the curriculum’s full integration to their organizing methodology.
OUR EXECUTION.
We worked with the Senior Vice President for Community Engagement and Advocacy to refine the process and align it with their capacity. We worked with the Organizing Director to audit current materials and identify what was working already and what needed to be reworked or created from scratch. After our alignment and assessment work, we focused on interviewing “families on the margins.” We targeted families who weren’t engaged with their school system with the most significant needs and worked with organizers to identify language, traditions, and existing assets to ensure their voices and stories were included in the content. After presenting recommendations, we worked with a creative director with experience in developing materials for bilingual communities to create a visual training that could be identified by color, name, or iconography, giving a chance for families with low literacy levels to be included in the process. Once the content was approved and edited, we presented their most common training in a train-the-trainer session in California. We then spent a few days observing organizers utilizing the content with families and debriefed to collect information on edits, most difficult sessions, and transitions.
OUR RESULTS.
This advocacy organization continues to use the training curriculum and have extended their library from seven modules to nine, continuing to use the powerful visuals and culturally responsive content. The organization has expanded its organizing library. They now have an academy that focuses on organizing history and current movements for their most advanced leaders. The organization has a statewide cadre of leaders who have mobilized over 5,000 family members in the last two years to defend their children’s education at the state capitol in Sacramento.