Community Strategic Training Initiative

This post is aimed at anyone in the Northwest whose conceptions of "live what you believe" and "that of God in everyone" call them to actions and connections beyond the circles of Friends.

RantWoman's main point: registration for the following event closes June 30 so if you are interested, get on the ball and sign up.

The Community Strategic Training Initiative is an annual conference held at Reed College just outside Portland OR. The conference tends to combine capacity-building workshops about useful skills like fundraising, grant-writing and board development with really diverse workshops on multi-cultural organizing. There is always a strong LGBTQ presence. There are wonderful energetic young people from all over WA, OR, ID, MT.

This year's program and registration info
http://www.westernstatescenter.org/our-work/csti/csti-2010

The link for this year's workshops:
http://www.westernstatescenter.org/our-work/csti/csti-2010/workshops

RantWoman attended a few years ago. RantWoman attended one workshop about multicultural organizing and still sometimes cites info she learned about what different foods mean in different cultures. RantWoman was deeply energized hearing about an organization called Montana Women Vote. RantWoman also enjoyed being part of an immigrant issues workshop where we checked at the beginning and realized no one needed interpretation into English. Finally, RantWoman was gratified the last day after another worship had ended early to slip into a Building a Board workshop and realize she had things to contribute just from knowing that someone has to keep track of official paperwork.

Some years there is more academic. wonk policy content than this year. The content is relentlessly secular and some people might like more radical systemic change content, but this is a great experience for many people. RantWoman would not mind another item or two about technology and about participation by people with disabilities, but she supposes she should just get on the ball, organize and propose such herself.