10 things I have learnt from Coventry Youth Activists about digital organising
Intro into my digital organising journey
As a Community Organiser at Connecting For Good I work in the community meeting people face to face in their everyday surroundings such as coffee shops and community spaces.
This came to an abrupt halt during lockdown as we had to take all of our work online. It meant having to learn and adapt in a very short space of time. I had to shape not only my own skills but also help shape the skills of those who I was working with. It was a huge learning curve but I wholeheartedly embraced it.
The pandemic showed us the impact, power, and importance of our communities. As community organisers it was our job to continue to tackle isolation, grow people’s leadership skills and take action on the issues that mattered during these unprecedented times… This meant shifting our learning. Digital times were upon us!
Once the lockdown was lifted we slowly moved back to meeting face to face. Online meetings became less but they were still extremely important, not only for the people I work with but also for myself. I have an illness that can and does affect my working life and daily patterns. Having an option to work from home and meet online is of great benefit to my working week and my energy and pain levels.
Several months ago I started working with Coventry Youth Activists. They meet twice a week and have a mix of in person and online sessions. I did think my online game was strong but they have helped me to elevate my digital organising to the next level!
Who are Coventry Youth Activists?
Coventry Youth Activists (CYA for short) are a group of young disabled campaigners that are passionate about disabled people’s rights to have a good life. CYA believe in disabled young people having a voice, having a chance to do what they want to do, breaking down barriers, ending online discrimination, and in changing their community with creativity and kindness. Their feelings were different during lockdown as it wasn’t just disabled people that became isolated.
“For most of you this is just temporary but for some of us, this is just our ordinary.”
Joey Mander CYA
CYA moved their meetings online which meant they were able to meet more often, whilst keeping safe and shielded at home. This increased their work capacity and helped them to grow their leadership journeys.
Weeknotes
After reflecting on my recent work I thought I would turn my weeknotes into “the top 10 things I have learnt from CYA about digital organising.” Please be under no illusion as I have definitely learnt more than ten things, thats for sure! But, I feel that these may be the most useful things for you to know about if you are planning to create interactive, accessible online sessions or campaigns
Online sessions
- Everyone has a role to play! Allocate different roles depending on people’s skills. These are the roles:
- Host — Prash with Community Organiser support
- Chair — Joey
- Notetaker — Heidi
- Biscuit Breaker — see point 3
- Vibes — assesses the energy of the group and suggests if we need to have a break, or switch things up — this is usually Kirstie and Prash.
- A Park It monitor lets the group know when we have gone off the agenda so that we can park that conversation and to stay on track, this is usually James.
2. Opening the zoom 10 minutes before you plan to start the meeting helps everyone to settle in and share anything they want the group to know before the serious work starts.
3. We start every session with a biscuit breaker. A biscuit breaker is CYA’S way of breaking the ice and getting to know each other. It started out at CYA’s in person sessions as they would offer a biscuit and share a question! Thomas is in charge of coming up with the biscuit breakers. We have used apps like the random Wheel Of Names to add a bit of online playfulness to this activity.
4. Stick to the agenda. This helps everyone to focus on a topic so meetings don’t become overwhelming. If we do go off topic we are reminded that we should park it
5. We always have a break so we can move away from the screen, get a drink, have a stretch or whatever else we might have to do to get us ready for the second half of the meeting. If needed the vibe checker may bring the break time forward if they notice people struggling.
Planning
6. I work on CYA with another Community Organiser. We take it in turns to support the sessions. To keep us on track and knowing what each other is doing we plan online using a shared Google doc. Everything we need for our meetings is hyperlinked in that doc and on the centralised CYA master spreadsheet so we can access and update after each session easily. This is definitely a stress buster when hosting online sessions as all the info is there at our fingertips!
1:1s
7. I have coaching sessions with members of CYA online to support them in their leadership journey. These sessions vary depending on what they are working on at that time and the level of support they need. We have worked on practising for our 1:1s, role play for different situations, reflections, visioning and crafting emails, social media posts and blogs for the website. Each session is very different and based on what that person’s access needs are.
8. Make good use of Zoom’s online tools! When coaching a member of CYA online, sharing a screen to work on documents together really helps. You can then highlight where you want them to go by using the drawing tool. The chat box allows us to share links and text I typed from their words.
9. When booking online 1:1s with people from other organisations or groups I usually open up the room for the CYA member 10 minutes earlier so we can refresh ourselves with what we want to achieve from the 1:1. Likewise we allocate 10–15 minutes at the end so we can reflect and work on our actions if needed.
10. CYA wanted to create an Ally Pack for individuals and organisations to learn about how they can play their part to stamp out online disability hate. CYA loves to find out about the new signups, they co-created a getting to know you sign up google form which we would recommend. If you would like to receive your copy of the Ally Pack click here.
Further info/reading
- Read: CYA’S blog posts
- Sign up: CYA’s Ally Pack
- Watch: CYA’s Joey on BBC World News
- Read: How to make your organising and activism meetings accessible by Act Build Change
- Check Out: Grapevine Cov & Wark’s Community Organisers Medium
Credits
Thanks to Siân Jessica Lewis for proof reading this post and for the vote of confidence to publish it!
