Recipe For Revolution

- by Richard Brueckner, HOPE Magazine.

HOW BUILDING COALITIONS CAN REMAKE OUR WORLD.

If there's one thing history can teach us, it's that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things when they commit themselves to an ideal. Consider all the progress we've made as a society in just the past one hundred and fifty years. We've abolished slavery, secured the voting rights of all citizens, outlawed segregation and racial discrimination, and we even created the "weekend." Each of these successes came about because people just like you and I decided to stand up for what they believed in. As Gandhi once said, "Be the change we want to see in the world."

His belief that every good deed, regardless of size, makes a difference is a philosophy that has been echoed by inspired world leaders for more than a century. As Robert F. Kennedy so eloquently stated, "Each time a man [or woman] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he [or she] sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

This is the foundation of coalition building—the ideal that individually we can make a difference, but together we can change the world. Coalitions unite the isolated efforts of people and organizations to create an empowered community. By standing in solidarity with their fellow human beings and tenaciously pursuing the necessary steps towards realizing a common vision, coalition members aren't just advocates…they're revolutionaries. So ask yourself: "Do I want to spend my life putting band-aids on problems, or do I want to help start a revolution?”

A SUCCESS STORY.

Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition (CHPCC) is an example of one way to build an effective coalition. In 2001 Lori Butterworth and Devon Dabbs, alongside a handful of children, parents and other like-minded people, embarked on a journey to transform healthcare in California. They began their quest by delving deeply into the needs of families undergoing the challenges of caring for a child with a life-threatening condition.

From this need emerged a vision of a healthcare system that's more natural, healing, and family-centered. Since then, CHPCC has grown into a diverse network of individuals, families, community members, clinicians, policy makers, and organizations that collaborate to pursue a common mission: challenging the existing healthcare system for children and insisting that public funding for healthcare services for sick children be in line with their needs. Eight years later, CHPCC has grown to nearly 2000 members across the country and has achieved numerous successes1. If you’re wondering what steps CHPCC took to get where they are today, you’re in luck. Below are some of the fundamental tools and ideas that helped guide CHPCC in the process of building and sustaining their revolution.

Concrete steps of Coalition Building

Step 1. Identify a major need that is being neglected and formulate your movement's vision. Think of the vision as your long term goal, a sort of idealistic carrot-on-a-stick propelling your movement forward. The key to a compelling vision is to make sure that the voices of those you want to represent are right beside you from the very beginning. When Butterworth and Dabbs launched CHPCC, they had no personal or professional experience to fall back on. Neither had cared for or lost a child to a life-threatening illness. So what did they do? They immediately brought experts into the process: parents, kids, and clinicians. They listened, learned, and sculpted a vision that clearly represented the ideals of their constituents. Interestingly, one of the keys to their success has been their non-partisan approach and their ability to remain receptive and inclusive when presented with seemingly disparate points of view.

Step 2. Develop a mission statement. If your vision is where you want to be, your mission statement is your plan for how to get there. Like a game plan or a road map, it can help guide your decisions and focus your efforts. When things get tough or out of control, you can always fall back on your mission statement to get your priorities back in line. While CHPCC’s mission statement evolved over the years, taking into consideration specific program strategies, its intention never changed “Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition exists to ensure compassionate, comprehensive care for children with life-threatening conditions. Together with their families, we speak out for those too little or too sick to speak for themselves, and create programs that directly improve the quality of their lives.”

Step 3. Build a diverse collaborative network by reaching out to potential stakeholders and allies. Keep in mind that the more inclusive and receptive your network is the stronger and more innovative it will be. When you bring people to the table, identify ways you can help each other and come prepared to listen, because mutual respect and flexibility are essential components of a thriving, evolving movement. It is in this spirit of collaboration that CHPCC established the Public Policy Committee, which is made up of representatives from multiple organizations with distinct constituencies, to help guide CHPCC in the development of a new benefit for children. CHPCC also helped create The Family Advisory Council, consisting of bereaved and caregiving parents, to provide critical input and guide the coalition in the development of policies, programs, and procedures.


Step 4. Communicate frequently with coalition members. Outreach is vital to building and sustaining your movement, so be creative. Teleconferences, podcasts, electronic newsletters, print magazines, social networking sites – all of these are at your finger tips, so use them! Effective and ongoing communication is absolutely essential to building the sense of collaborative solidarity that coalitions need to succeed. CHPCC pursues active and effective communication through quarterly conference calls, regularly scheduled meetings, list serve newsletters, blogs, and they even have Facebook and Twitter accounts!

Step 5. Allocate resources wisely. The manner in which you distribute shared resources across a network is critical to its total effectiveness. Keep in mind that resource sharing includes information sharing, because information is a valuable resource to both your coalition and the people it’s striving to help.

A good strategy is to develop an efficient division of labor: form task forces to solve immediate goals that advance your cause, and get the right people and resources involved. Form local and regional committees, undertake projects that attract and include motivated people, and develop strategies to connect people to existing local and regional organizations. CHPCC did this by establishing regional collaboratives in Northern, Central, and Southern California to facilitate the dissemination of information, gather input, and to help bolster regional support for children with life-threatening conditions. These bi-monthly or quarterly meetings have been instrumental in growing and strengthening on-the-ground support regional networks for these children.

The hardest part of the process is keeping it all together. It helps to develop a shared praxis, a practical habitual practice, which is mutually beneficial and advances your cause. When people help each other out over and over again, members of even drastically different communities can forge lasting social bonds that makes your movement that much stronger. This was the case in many of the programs that CHPCC has taken on. Throughout the process of building the Partnership for Children – charged with the task of implementing a model for pediatric palliative care – people came together to provide a new standard of coordinated care.

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” - Henry Ford

A FINAL WORD ON REVOLUTION.

Revolution is about committed individuals armed with a mission relentlessly pursuing a vision of justice in the face of adversity alongside an empowered community of friends and allies. If you're serious about changing the world, get out there and build a movement. Reach out to those who you want to help, to the countless others who share their dreams, and to those with the resources to make it happen. Remember that it's not about "us" and "them," but what WE can do to make sure that the world our great grandchildren will inherit is not only something we can be proud of, but something we can be proud that we helped to create. With patience, respect, and dedication you can use coalition building as a model for starting a revolution founded on diversity, flexibility, and solidarity that can remake our world. The path may be difficult, but the rewards will be great.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has." – Margaret Mead.