Creating Change Conference 2009
January 28–February 1

Day Long Institutes

Creating Change proudly presents a full menu of Day Long Institutes that provide in-depth teaching and learning in each important topic area. Topics range from anti-racism and people of color leadership to youth leadership, aging advocacy, community center and campus programs, and class, sex and faith. Check it out!

Day Long Institutes are presented on Wednesday January 28 and Thursday January 29. Registration fees for Creating Change include attendance at Day Long Institutes, so roll up your sleeves and get ready to learn from some of our movement’s brightest thinkers and strategists.

Wednesday January 28

Start with the Fundamentals: Anti-Racism Institute for New Activists
Learn the fundamentals of anti-racism work and go home with tools, resources and a deeper understanding of this critical work. You will learn about race-based privilege, anti-racism language and definitions, how to be an ally, accountability, and how to see and name racism in your work and/or your organization. Develop an anti-racist framework and apply it to your organizing! This session is intended for white people who are newly exploring the topic. People of color are welcome to attend.

Building Community and Solidarity from the Inside Out: Anti-Racism Institute for Intermediate Activists
Add to your “anti-racism tool box.” Deepen your commitment to anti-racism. You will learn how to challenge the barriers between white people that get in the way of deeper and more effective anti-racism work; anti-racism organizing strategies, practices and models that lead to deeper multi-racial alliances; how to use your anti-racism lens and making the connections between identities and issues. Intended for white people engaged in anti-racism/anti-oppression work for 2-5 years and have attended two or more fundamentals anti-racism trainings or classes. People of color are welcome to attend.

Finding Our Kin Folk: People of Color Organizing Institute for New Activists
Specifically for people of color who would like to explore their life experiences as LGBT people of color. This institute is for people of color who want to name, share and strategize about the issues of identity and community that impact our lives. This is a multi-racial people of color space and so issues facing people of color within and between communities will be discussed. This session will focus on skills for community building.

Building Bridges Across Our Communities: People of Color Organizing Institute for Intermediate Activists
This day long institute is intended for people of color who have considerable experience organizing in and with communities of color and want to deepen their work in our own community (ies) and/or build stronger bridges across communities of color. This institute will focus heavily on both identity-based (e.g. Brown/Black; light skinned/dark skinned) and issue-based (e.g. war; reproductive justice; colonialism) organizing strategies. We will also be addressing issues of privilege and how all forms of oppression connect. Intended to create a multi-racial people of color space and, as a result, issues facing people of color within and between communities will be discussed. Intended for people of color who have 2-5 years of organizing experience.

Organizing at the Intersections: For Seasoned Activists
This interactive day-long institute is only for seasoned (by either age or experience) anti-oppression organizers and trainers. This strategy and movement building session is for no more than 25 people and it will be intentionally multi-racial, multi-identity and multi-issue. Participants will work together throughout this session to develop a vision for broader intersectional work and to share best practices, challenges and movement building strategies. You must apply to participate in this session by completing the questionnaire/application. Your participation will be confirmed. To apply, click here.

Thursday January 29

Community Center Institute
This Day Long Institute for community center staff, board members and volunteers will present best practices on the recruitment, roles & responsibilities, and retention of Board members. We’ll discuss how to create and maintain healthy relationships between Board and Staff with plenty of time built in for discussion and problem solving. The session is designed to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes and experience levels. This Institute will be held at the fabulous GLBT Community Center of Colorado. Transportation will be provided to/from the host hotel.

The Family Institute
In its second year, the Family Institute will (1) provide space for LGBT parents, family members and allies to discuss issues that impact families; (2) provide opportunities for parents and family advocates to share experiences, best practices and resources; and (3) strategize about ways to better include families, family issues and family perspectives in the larger LGBT movement for social change.

Let's Work Together to Pass a Fully Inclusive ENDA!
The time to pass a fully-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is now! Transgender people were cut out of ENDA in 2007, and we need to make sure that this doesn't happen in 2009! There has been much work done throughout the country since that time, so come join with others who want to, and have been, taking action in our districts and states. Together, we can educate and persuade Senators and Representatives to vote and stay strong with us, now that we have a chance to pass this bill into law!

We will cover building a strong team, finding and developing stories of discrimination from your area, finding others in your area who will call/email their elected officials, using town halls and public forums wisely, using the media to call attention to this issue, using polling and other data, and, most importantly, developing and strengthening relationships with our Senators and Representatives. All are welcome.

Best Practices for Queer Youth Work: Transforming Strategies for Youth Participation
This Institute will provide LGBTQ youth-serving professionals with a space to learn, mingle and discuss important topics affecting our work in a space designated for folks working with our community’s youth. We will highlight research and initiatives related to LGBTQ youth, introduce tools to assess organizational readiness, and consider approaches to increasing organizational capacity to do long term movement work that is inclusive of young people. This Institute is geared towards adults who would like to further develop their skills in creating anti-adultist frameworks for youth/adult partnerships and youth participation within their organizations. However, all are welcome to attend regardless of age or position.

Aging: How We Can Create Change in Our Own Back Yard And Have a National Impact
With age comes knowledge – and a whole new set of policies and entitlement programs affecting every aspect of your being. Learn how the Older Americans Act is implemented in your communities, and how you can add an LGBT voice into your community’s plans for services, programs and policies that affect older adults. (This Day Long Institute session is sponsored by SAGE)

The New Marriage Landscape & Diverse Strategies to Keep the Momentum
Freedom to Marry leaders and national and state experts explore ways to capitalize on victories and deal with new challenges as we press forward state by state toward a nationwide end to exclusion from marriage. Key players will discuss the marriage equality landscape and swap ideas on how to continue the momentum gained with recent victories. We will ask: What messaging and message-delivery tactics are working? What lessons on what leaders might have done differently can help shape what we do now in other states? How can we build on our successes to create a snowball effect across the nation over the next decade? What’s in the works at the federal level? How can states with anti-gay constitutional amendments make progress at home, undermine or overcome the amendments, and contribute to the nationwide victory? What are we doing to broaden the discussion and enlist new allies?

LGBT Campus Administrators
The Consortium of Higher Education LGBT Resource Professionals (“the Consortium”) will host a day of professional development, skills building, and networking for those who have a professional role supporting LGBTQ issues on college and university campuses and people wishing to assume such a position on a college campus.

The Revolution will be More Than Televised: Health as a Tool for Social & Economic Justice
Combining new strategies with proven organizing successes, this Institute will address our next challenge: Creating and Advancing an LGBT Health Agenda on a federal, state and local level. We will deconstruct the current reality and explore health on an individual level – as a community phenomena – and as a vehicle for social change. We will discuss how to build organizational and movement buy-in, identify pressing issues and advocacy ideas, and energize participants for moving this plan into action!

Voice & Action: Young Adult Leader Institute
Vision change. Dig deep. Take action. Young adult leaders from across the country will learn valuable strategies for empowering their voices and being advocates for social justice. This Day Long institute explores the skills and resources necessary for successful leadership, coalition building and tackling issues within your college campus or your local community. Presented by Campus Pride (www.campuspride.org)

Empowering and Working with People of Faith
This Day Long Institute is for people of faith and religious organizers who want to build a more powerful faith-based movement for LGBT equality and for secular activists who want to build stronger relationships with communities and leaders of faith. This year's Institute will emphasize the strength of multi-faith organizing and will explore sexual liberation, sexuality, and the ways in which religion and spirituality are resources.

Bringing Sexy Back: Re-Claiming Sexual Liberation in the LGBT Movement
This Day Long Institute is dedicated to Bringing Sexy Back by grounding us in our personal experiences and expressions of our desire, and then considering how to engage our authentic selves politically.

First, Class: Economic Justice and Class Issues in the LGBT Movement
We will spend the day examining poverty issues in the LGBT community and the role that class issues play in our movement. As our movement assimilates into the mainstream, many LGBT poor and working class people are left behind by gay organizations that do not address poverty issues. The increasing corporatization of our movement requires that we examine the ways in which class privilege and corporate ties affect the work of our community organizations as well as our community's cultural values. Our goal is to get LGBT activists to think critically about the ways in which economic justice issues impact LGBT people. We also intend to help participants examine the ways in which class biases and presumptions affect their work, and to strategize about how to better serve LGBT people of all classes.

Human Rights and LGBT People: Building the Movement for Human Rights in the United States
This Day Long Institute will, for the first time at Creating Change, present the Human Rights framework, language, strategies and mechanisms, and its relevance for the LGBT liberation movement in the United States. Topics include universal human rights framework and principles, the interdependent relationship of the civil rights and human rights frameworks, the universal and regional human rights systems, the status of LGBT human rights and sexual rights more broadly, strategies and mechanisms for using human rights domestically in litigation, legislative advocacy, communications/media, fundraising, grassroots organizing and popular education.