Creating a Team
“I can’t change the world on my own, it’ll take at least three of us.”
- Bill Mollison
Below, we have listed a few working groups that may help you get a community assembly off the ground. They constitute best practice, not a minimum requirement. Your local group may feel that so many working groups are well beyond your capacity so don’t let this guidance discourage you! It doesn’t take an army of volunteers to put on an assembly!
Alliance Building
Timing
This is the role that you need to establish very early on in your project. At least one person in your local group should lead communications with other organisations. While it will be helpful to brainstorm in your local group around potential assembly topics and locations, you will need to
discuss all of these things early on with other organisations and be open to their suggestions if you want to collaborate with them. Unless you have a political or lobbying team, this will also be the role that contacts local politicians and invites them to the assembly. On Rebel Toolkit, you can find [resources for local alliance buildingbuilding](https://rebeltoolkit.extinctionrebellion.uk/books/community-alliance-building/page/community-alliance-building-resource-list) to inform this work.
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Media and Messaging Crew Importance: Nice to have Timing: Middle to end of project The role of this group is to promote the assembly through the media. That could involve your local group’s own online channels and newsletter, but you could also try local press outlets or ask allied organisations to promote the event in their newsletters and social media. On top of that, this team will coordinate taking pictures of the assembly and capturing them on your social media. If you would appreciate any support with your local media work, feel free to contact media@rebellion.earth and they can put you in touch with your regional/national Media & Messaging rep. Facilitators Importance: Super essential Timing: End of project For each Community Assembly, you will need at least one facilitator, ideally two. Facilitators maintain radical inclusivity, active listening and trust so that all voices are heard and valued equally. They keep the discussion focused and structured and prevent it from becoming unwieldy which is absolutely crucial for a successful assembly. Trust The People provides training on how to become a Community Assembly facilitator. While it is ideal to have a local facilitator, facilitation takes a bit of experience and if you’ve never facilitated a meeting or event before, facilitating a whole assembly throws you in at the deep end. You could watch another facilitator first before giving it a go yourself and invite a facilitator from another LG to facilitate your assembly. Recommendations: • Make sure that your facilitators don’t have entrenched political bias or other strong prejudice, in accordance with inclusion principles. Party-political neutrality in facilitators ensures more effective assemblies. • Ideally, a female facilitator is one of the assembly leads. It has been shown that this will greatly increase the level of engagement of female participants and the uptake of facilitation roles of women in general. The rate of engagement and uptake for males isn’t affected in the same way.