16 HOURS
Saturdays, October 3 - October 24 | 12p - 4p EST

Participants who complete the program will leave with a concrete roadmap and the skills to start and/or expand their own projects. The key skills they will learn include:

• Systems-thinking

• Community development and building (CSR) project planning and strategy

• Storytelling/Narrative-building

• Needs assessment methods

• Asset-mapping

The CSR School is rooted in the six components of Visionary Organizing, a framework that shows how small acts can scale into collective power. Together, we’ll practice how the smallest projects can grow into networks of care, resilient movements, and thriving communities. Classes are taught by Matt Birkhold and Angela Kim and consist of a mixture of large and small group discussion, reflections on our experiences, discussion of readings on community self-reliance case studies, and imagining new possibilities.

As a result of the CSR School, participants will:

• Be able to understand and explain why the world currently feels so chaotic.

• Have a better understanding of how their life is influenced by the economy and larger culture.

• Know the differences between different kinds of needs and see how to meet them all through cultivating interdependence.

• Have a tool to connect to their inner wisdom and understand that different outcomes are possible when we follow our inner wisdom.

• Be able to define and understand the importance of community self-reliance projects and how they can repair nature, communities, each other, and ourselves.

• Be able to name examples of community self-reliant projects and understand how these projects are able to meet community needs while depending less on money.

• Develop a vision and plan for their own community self-reliance project.

• Write their own systems autobiography and have a better understanding of their own gifts and skills to implement their unique CSR project.

• Saturday, October 3: What is Community Self Reliance (CSR): Imagining New Possibilities

• Saturday, October 10: How to Organize CSR projects: Inner Wisdom, Affirming Dignity, and Interdependence

• Saturday, October 17: How to Maintain CSR Projects Locating Ourselves in Systems and History & Experimenting with Transformation

• Saturday, October 24: Creating a CSR Project--Mapping Next Steps

Matt Birkhold is a cultural worker whose facilitation and teaching practices aim to connect people to their creative capacity to understand and transform the world. He has facilitated project and organizational visioning, planning, execution, and culture building for CSR groups around the US, trained foundations how to fund CSR, is currently writing a book on CSR projects, When Things Stop Working, and has made multiple films on CSR projects. He is a sought after facilitator and groups and people he’s worked with have gone on to better understand their work, deepen it, and create dignity affirming cultures to support it. He lives in Baltimore with his partner of 14 years, loves house music, and has been involved in movements for over twenty years.

Q: Can I give this as a gift to someone else?
A: Absolutely! Once you order your ticket (after you enter your payment details), you will be able to include the name and email address of the person you wish to receive this gift. The recipient will receive an email notification upon completion of registration.

Q: I bought a ticket, but can no longer attend. Can I transfer my ticket to another person?
A: Yes, you can transfer the ticket to another person. Just email bookings@visionarylab.org with the information of the person you wish to transfer the ticket to, and we will update the information manually.

Impact Hub Baltimore
10 E North Charles St Suite 5
Baltimore, MD 21202