Learning on the Job IV: Constituency Leadership Development

On November 9, UUSC's Economic Justice Program staff attended three trainings at the 2007 “Nonprofit Workout,” whose theme this year was “The Ways We Lead: Creating Adaptive, Inclusive Organizations.”

In the afternoon, Johanna and I went our separate ways to different workshops, and the session I attended was called "Constituency Leadership Development: What, Why, and How."

At the heart of CSIO's work is the concept of "constituency leadership development." What does that mean? Well, first CSIO defines the constituents of an organization as "the people whom the organization serves, individuals who come into the organization seeking assistance and members of the community whom the organization's work impacts." This includes immigrants, but it would also include low-wage workers, people of color, women, youth, and other marginalized groups within a community.

CSIO describes its philosophy and practices of constituency leadership development in a three-pager, and it's still a work in progress, but what it boils down to is that constituency leadership development is the "process of creating opportunities for people to exercise power and offer their experience, knowledge, and skills to the work of positive community change," based on the notion that "people who are affected by injustice know best how to overcome that injustice." However, this can only come about when people have ongoing experiences of their own value and importance -- including their collective power -- in contributing to social change, shifting out of a mode of powerlessness and passivity that can result from ongoing experiences of oppression.

As participants in the workshop, we also had a range of ideas about what leadership development can look like, from constituents educating each other about their rights, to being spokespeople on their own behalf, to taking ownership of the mission of the organization. It may also mean supporting people to use the experience they've developed through living their day-to-day struggles to think systemically about how to promote social change.

In the context of working with organizations, this process of leadership development means that constituents must have access to decision-making roles, including staff and board positions, and must be fully integrated into the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the work.

The concept of constituency leadership development is particularly useful to UUSC's Economic Justice Program because workers in the informal economy and in unregulated industries are facing tremendous abuses of their human rights, but also have the opportunity to exercise leadership to change those conditions through organizing and advocacy with our partner groups. Organizations like our workers' centers partners in the United States and the Kenya National Alliance of Street Vendors and Informal Traders (KENASVIT), are already actively practicing constituency leadership development.