Communiqué

IN THE FIELD
Student Focus
Marshall Ganz’s Students Spread the Power of Community Organizing Across the Globe
Kanoko Kamata, former
Roy and Lila Ash Fellow and
MPA ‘12
Fifty nonprofit leaders, social movement activists,
and public-sector officials from across Japan convened
in Tokyo in December 2014 to learn some of
the leadership strategies and organizing techniques
employed successfully in the US and elsewhere.
Hosted by Community Organizing Japan (COJ),
the event was something of a novelty in a nation reputed
to have little tradition of civic engagement.
Participants were encouraged to step outside their
comfort zones, engaging in the dynamic storytelling,
strategizing, and team-building exercises fundamental
to the practice of community organizing.
Kanoko Kamata, an HKS alumna and former Roy
and Lila Ash Fellow at the Ash Center, founded COJ
in 2013 and invited HKS Senior Lecturer in Public
Policy and Ash Center affiliate Marshall Ganz to collaborate
with her and her team of local coaches in
leading a series of community organizing workshops
over the past year.
Kamata first encountered community organizing
while a student in Ganz’s course on Organizing: People,
Power, and Change at the Kennedy School. “I
was very new to the idea and I was skeptical about
its usefulness in other countries besides the US,”
says Kamata. “But the more I learned about community
organizing, the more I understood that it’s fundamental
to human society for people to come
together and solve problems.”
In Ganz’s semester-long class, students learn not
only the theoretical and historical significance of collective
action, but are required to create their own
organizing campaign by mobilizing a constituency
to achieve a shared purpose and clear outcome.
The multiday workshops that Ganz works with
local leadership to conduct in Japan and elsewhere
around the world including Jordan, China, Colombia,
and Canada, offer participants an introduction to
leadership, organizing, and public narrative. Based
on Ganz’s teaching, a research project with the
Sierra Club, and development at scale in the 2007–
2008 Obama for President Campaign, the workshops
provide participants with an opportunity to
experience fundamental organizing practices and
explore their utility in meeting challenges they face
in their own communities.
Five practices are central to Ganz’s coursework
on community organizing. The first involves what
Ganz calls “public narrative”: a “story of self,” a “story
of us,” and a “story of now.” The story of self explains
why the organizer is called to leadership and it can
be a challenge for those unaccustomed to sharing
their personal histories in a public setting.
“The story of self was a particularly interesting
concept for the COJ attendees,” says Kamata. “Some
people were hesitant at first because people in
Japan don’t expect to tell their story, but it was exciting
for them to see how this practice can build relationships
quickly and deeply.”
The story of us is an answer to the question: what
values as a community call us to action? The story
of now is the challenge to our communal values that
demands present action.
“Say you are sick due to environmental hazards
in your neighborhood,” says Kamata. “That’s the
story of self—it’s what motivated you to care about
the environment. The story of us is that the environment
is important to everyone in the surrounding
community and the story of now is that we need to
act immediately to protect the environment.”
The four other practices developed by Ganz include
building relationships, structuring collaborative
leadership, strategizing how to turn available
resources into power to accomplish clear goals, and
achieving measurable outcomes “on the ground.”
Students in his organizing class at HKS learn organizing
and leadership skills with which to replicate the
training and share effective organizing practices
with a wider audience.
“Learning to be a leader and an organizer is a
skill,” says Ganz. “It’s a lot like riding a bike. You can
read 10 books on the topic, but how do you really
learn to ride a bike? You get on it. You fall. And, then
you find the courage to learn from your failures and
try again. That’s how you master any skill and that’s
how you learn organizing.”
Many of Ganz’s former students put these skills
to work after they graduate, including those who
have gone on to become organizers themselves,
such as Nisreen Haj Ahmed, co-founder of Ahel in
Jordan; Predrag Stojicic, co-founder of Serbia on the
Move in Serbia; and Cecilia Barja, who represents
Colombia for Fundacion Avina and is a leader of
Narrativa Publica in the Amazon. Ganz remains connected
to them as well as other Harvard alumni
through the Leading Change Network, a community
of educators, researchers, and practitioners committed
to developing organizing leadership and empowering
people to act on their values.
For his students that opt not to pursue a career
in organizing, they leave his class with a valuable understanding
of leadership, group dynamics, and the
role of collective action in strengthening democracy.
Mick Power, a current HKS master’s in public policy
student, says of his experience in Marshall’s class:
“Students in Marshall's class are required not just to
learn, but to organize, so being part of a group of
student leaders working to end racism, homelessness,
religious intolerance, violence, and inequality
in their communities was a weekly inspiration. I think
the fact that so many of his students are still working
in the teams and communities that they discovered
through his class is a testament to Marshall's genuine
passion for teaching, and to how much of himself he
gives to his work and his students.” C
www.ash.harvard.edu
Spring 2015 Communiqué
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