A Toolkit for Effective Everyday Activism

This book examines the issues that cause environmental activists to become despondent and disheartened.

Leanne Kelly and Alison Rogers unpack theories from the social sciences to help find meaning, explain these feelings of inertia, and provide strategies to overcome them. Through lessons learned over their careers as evaluators in non-profit organisations, Kelly and Rogers provide tools and strategies for measuring, improving, and sharing the effectiveness of planet-saving activities. They draw upon interviews with everyday people who are contributing to change in their homes, community groups, workplaces, and social settings to understand how they motivate and encourage others. The book concludes with a realistic look at individual expectations and focuses on how to prioritise self-care to ensure that activists can keep contributing in a way that maintains their wellbeing and balance.

A Toolkit for Effective Everyday Activism empowers people to use theory, research and practical tools to leverage their power so they can make the maximum contribution possible and sustain their efforts over the long term. It will be a great resource for individuals working and volunteering in community groups, NGOs and non-profit and corporate organisations with an environmental focus.

1. Setting the scene

2. Facing a problematic world

3. Exploring underlying motivations

4. Finding fulfilment

5. Cooperating with others

6. Dealing with people who disagree

7. Everyday evaluation

8. Self-care

9. Effective activism starts with everyday people

Index

Alison Rogers has worked in public health for over 20 years. She spent over 15 years of this time working in non-profit organisations including as an internal evaluator and an external evaluator. She has a PhD from the University of Melbourne's Centre for Program Evaluation that investigated evaluation advocates in non-profit organisations. Alison also has a Master of Evaluation and a Master of Public Health among other tertiary degrees in philosophy, health, education, and science. She currently holds an Honorary Research Fellow position with the Assessment and Evaluation Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. She has co-authored a book on internal evaluation and published 15 scholarly papers. Alison is the secretary on the executive committee of her local environmental networking group and writes book reviews and articles for their e-publication. She has recently opened a bookshop to foster a community around reading and writing.

Leanne Kelly has spent nearly 20 years working in community development and social service non-profit organisations across five continents. She has worked for non-profit organisations in a broad range of disciplines (from housing and emergency services to child protection and peacebuilding) with the majority of her roles focused on evaluation. Leanne has also worked as an external evaluator for non-profit organisations, most recently in Myanmar. She has a PhD from Deakin University on evaluation in small international and community development non-profits and has published 40 scholarly papers and two books: Evaluation in Small Development Non-Profits and Internal Evaluation in Non-Profit Organisations (co-authored with Dr Alison Rogers) with Routledge. She is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Deakin University and is the National Evaluation Advisor at the Australian Red Cross.