Power Lift 1: Introducing Power Literacy

This month I celebrated a big milestone: five years of teaching about power literacy! When I got into this, I didn’t know where it would go, but I knew it was really important to me after leaving four terms elected to government in Vancouver to try and pass on what I have learned about navigating power structures to people and communities trying to make progressive change. Over the past five years I’ve taught my flagship course at The University of British Columbia, developed two courses at Simon Fraser University that look at navigating power in public engagement and climate action respectively, taught seminars at Harvard University Graduate School of Design and ETH Zürich, joined the faculty at the United Way BC - Lower Mainland Region Public Policy Institute and the LEVEL youth policy program and created tailored training programs for advocates, public servants and elected officials. I also was invited to write a six-part explainer series about power for PressProgress, I provide strategic advice to courageous policy makers to help them overcome incumbent power structures and I often do public speaking on power literacy. What is power literacy? I am so glad you asked and I could write it here but my friend Eileen Park Robertson asked me to sit down and talk to her about it which turned into the idea of doing a series of explainer videos that dive into answering that question plus using these exciting/scary times we are living in to help folks who are interested build their power literacy. I would love if you could have a look and let me know what you think. I’ll be dropping some more over the next few weeks and based on your feedback, deciding whether to keep going with it. Excited to hear your thoughts! https://lnkd.in/gsx77i7X | 35 comments on LinkedIn