Associate Director of Organizing Wayne Richard is spending three weeks in central Europe, teaching community organizing practices through an international exchange program.
Wayne’s training sessions in Slovakia and Hungary are offered through the Great Lakes Consortium (GLC) for International Training and Development.
Since 2012, the organizing exchange has brought five of our organizers to Europe to offer training. CCH also hosted nine fellows in Chicago, with host homes provided by staff and board members Rich Goldstein and Jaquie Algee.
While in Europe, Wayne’s training work included facilitating a panel discussion on organizing for 23 fellows in Slovakia. The group included youth interested in organizing people through the arts, as Wayne does through Horizons, his creative writing outreach program in Chicago’s family shelters.
In Budapest, he trained 18 social workers with the Malta service agency, teaching how to connect more effectively with clients. Wayne presented his curriculum, The Power of Story.
The exchange offers opportunities for its U.S. trainers to learn more about central Europe. These included a private meeting with the mayor of Trnava, Slovakia, and field visits within the impoverished Roma community served by many of GLC fellows.
“I have spoken with several Roma families of their experiences of oppression and discrimination in Hungary,” Wayne wrote. “Here I am visiting one Roma area in the woods, where people have built huts to survive.”
Wayne returns to Chicago on July 25.
– Anne Bowhay, Media