Social change is Crucially Important in the New Era Being Inaugurated by Barack Obama.

Creating social change for groups of people who are the most vulnerable, oppressed, and invisible involves social change among the sectors of society that are more privileged, more powerful, and less vulnerable. Collaboration can bring vulnerable and privileged together into effective action for social change.

The book, Journeys into Justice, explores multiple factors that contribute to social change. Ten case histories delve into motivations, organization, and values involved in the struggle for worker justice, environmental justice, juvenile justice, family empowerment, justice for immigrants, and the living wage campaign. These are powerful stories of social change.

The ten case histories of collaborative organizations reveal how diverse groups and organizations can come together, discover common values, build trust, overcome cultural barriers, and act powerfully to secure real and lasting social change.

Social change involves creating aggregated people power sufficient to influence political, economic, and cultural systems. Often citizens feel impotent and disengaged and unable to have meaningful influence within the large institutional systems that shape society. However, that can change when diverse groups and organizations discover the power of collaborative organizations that are effective agents of social change.

When groups of people with diverse cultural styles and backgrounds interact over a significant period of time for a common cause, they are transformed, influenced in new ways of thinking and acting, and they become bonded in a way that produces sustained and powerful action for social change. This type of internal interpersonal change is crucial for influencing social change in the larger, institutional, systemic arena. The ten case histories of collaboration in Journeys Into Justice demonstrate this type of dynamic social change.

 

Want to learn more about creating social change? Get your copy of Journeys into Justice today!