Community building is important to Action Corps success

Many of you have been participating in online training sessions to prepare for volunteering in your city's Oxfam Action Corp. And some are gearing up for additional training and a lobby experience in Washington DC.  A common challenge for Action Corps is to establish a local presence and build a team of core volunteers. This post written by Yoshiko is a wonderful account of her experience building community as an organizer. 

Building Community in a Population of 7.4 Million

Submitted by Yoshiko Hill

The San Francisco Bay Area has quite the reputation; one of flowering natural vistas, pronounced diversity, technology driven innovation and social activism, but advocating for hunger, poverty and social justice inequality is no easy task even within an activism incubator like the Bay Area. Bearing this in mind, how does one build relevance and elevate above the clutter of bustling lifestyles and boundless priorities to become a force for change in the local advocacy landscape of the Bay Area's 101 cities?

For Oxfam America's California based grassroots arm, the Bay Area Oxfam Action Corps (OAC), the answer lies in community building and a microscopic focus on relationships to connect advocates, volunteers, local leaders and politicians alike in an area with a population of 7.4 million.

As an OAC Organizer, I worked to make community building center stage and created relationships based on the shared vision of a world without hunger and poverty by prioritizing one-on-one communication, managing diverse and engaging local events and shaping a social atmosphere.

While leading Oxfam America's local grassroots efforts, I helped foster an active passion for social justice advocacy within members of the Bay Area Oxfam community by establishing partnerships with leading nonprofits, opening dialogue with local elected officials and of course encouraging fresh-faced volunteers to step out of their comfort zones and flex their outreach muscles.

Of my diverse functions as an Organizer, one of the most rewarding was my role as a catalyst through which I was able to empower our more introverted volunteers to lead and take ownership of local outreach efforts by directly engaging the public and building confidence as a social activist.

Many of our volunteers are new to advocacy and have never taken on such an active outreach role in their professional or personal lives. For these folks, the OAC offers a unique opportunity for self-discovery and genuine personal growth. One such volunteer was a longtime Oxfam supporter, but new to active engagement with the organization. He dived right in by volunteering with our rockstar team at a local farmer’s market and was openly nervous about initiating one-on-one conversations. After an hour with the team, he found his own communication style and was engaging in thoughtful conversations around the importance of local farmers, food justice and worker’s rights like a professional. Playing off of the group’s fun, casual and welcoming dynamics, and after a bit of positive encouragement, he discovered his inner activist.

Effecting these tiny sparks helped create countless memories that I will not soon forget and allowed me to master the dynamic relationship and community building skills invaluable to any career path and essential to promoting social awareness anyplace whether San Francisco or Indianapolis.