As the union grows and as we become more ambitious in the fights we take on, we also need to build our confidence with organising, member defence, communications to support our branches’ activities and campaigns.
Supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Living Rent has developped this training program to support tenants and residents to hone their skills to continue their struggles for better housing across Scotland. Thorough planning and strategising, good organisation, effective member defence and clear communications all take practice, more practice and more practice. Come do this and learn with fellow union members!
Sessions are open to all, with a focus on supporting Living Rent’s members to feel empowered to take up action in their branches and teams.
Training sessions cover member defence (resisting evictions, doing member defence in social and public housing), organisational skills (chairing, understanding Living Rent), campaigning skills (selecting an issue, power mapping and planning a direct action), communication skills (writing, speaking up, producing graphics and videos) and offer some political education regarding the context of housing politics in Scotland and the trends that threaten neighbourhoods. throughout Scotland.
You can see the programme here.
Each session is independent and geared towards specific skills - you can come to one or to all of them. This is the first time that Living Rent has developped such a union-wide training: we are learning by doing with the aim to adapt these sessions to branch specific campaigns and to another union-wide training programme in 2021 based on feedback on this first attempt. Each session is between ninety minutes and two hours long with a break included. They take place on Zoom, an online conference tool.
Please register for each session on the Living Rent website (see each session in the training section) or through the facebook events. If you have any question around registration, the content, how to access these trainings, how to run a branch-specific one or want to be involved in planning a session, contact Emma Saunders at [email protected]
In the last year, the union has seen members building their branches, selecting their quick hits and longer-term campaigns, creating their member defence teams and drafting demands to change the politics of housing in Scotland, this training programme seeks to learn from these efforts and support all members to become active in their branches and in their union.