Field Training

Field Training: Leading Urgent Campaigns

Green Corps organizers get the bulk of their training in a hands-on setting. Working with groups like Sierra Club and Greenpeace, organizers develop the skills that will enable them to lead such efforts in the future. Responsibilities include recruiting, training and supervising volunteers; increasing public awareness; securing media coverage; building strong coalitions; fundraising; and developing a strategy.

After completing the Introductory Classroom Training in August, Green Corps organizers lead three to five different campaigns in communities across the country. Working with several different campaign partners exposes organizers to a diversity of issues, tactics and organizations. Green Corps organizers travel to different cities for campaigns, allowing them to work with different communities and constituencies.

While the field training portion of the program requires a significant amount of independence, Green Corps provides structure and support to help with each organizer's personal leadership development. Green Corps Organizing Directors provide one-on-one support, supervision and feedback through weekly phone consultations and site visits during each of the campaigns.

Current Campaigns

•  Expanding clean energy and taking on coal – The process of burning and mining coal causes more than 30 percent of our global warming pollution, destroys our mountains, and releases toxic mercury into our communities.  Green Corps organizers are working to phase out coal usage and expand clean energy through a number of campaigns.  Six organizers are working in communities to retire aging coal plants, stop the export of coal and increase clean energy usage in states like Texas, Oregon, and Connecticut with Sierra Club.  Additionally, four organizers are working with Sierra Club on a ballot initiative in Michigan that would require 25% of the state’s electricity to come from renewable sources by 2025.  Finally, three organizers are working on behalf of As You Sow to move the endowments of Northwestern University, Brown University and Lewis and Clark College out of the 15 largest coal burning and mining companies. 

• Labeling Genetically Engineered foods – Genetically Engineered (or GE) foods are increasingly common in our diet.  However, they have not been tested for long-term impacts on human and environmental health.  GE crops are also often grown with heavy pesticide and herbicide applications, polluting waterways and harming wildlife.  Consumers have no way of knowing right now whether food they eat contains GE ingredients.  Ten organizers are working in Florida, Iowa and Illinois with Food & Water Watch to introduce bills in the state legislature that would require disclosure of GE ingredients to consumers.  Additionally, two organizers are working in California with Pesticide Action Network of North America on a statewide ballot initiative that would mandate labeling for consume

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