Do you want to do something impactful this summer and make a difference in your community? Do you want to help endangered species, protect our planet from plastic pollution, and educate your community about sustainable fashion?
The Organizer Leadership Training Program is for you!
Organizer Leadership Training Program
The Student PIRGs and Green Corps train thousands of young organizers every year. Our training program is built on more than 50 years of experience, organizing students and community members around the country on some of the most pressing issues of the day.
Our training programs don’t just talk about the issues, we train organizers to take real action, from reducing the use of toxic pesticides in Colorado to educating thousands of students about the issues of fast fashion on college campuses across the country. Here are some of our accomplishments this past year.
The goal of this program is to give you hands-on experience organizing campaign actions in your community.
This summer we are launching local campaign actions to:
- Stop fast fashion practices and promote sustainable alternatives
- Clean up our waterways of plastic pollution
- Address local community food and housing needs
- Protect endangered species
- Stop wasteful practices by ensuring people have the tools and resources to fix their own stuff
- Register new voters across the country
Participants should expect to learn the skills and implement them immediately by engaging community members at local farmers markets, hosting educational events at local libraries, and talking to decision-makers like the mayor and city council members.
You will have the opportunity to learn from some of the top social change organizers with decades of experience in campaign work. Graduates of our program continue their organizing work into the school year with new leadership skills and professional connections with top-student leaders around the country.
Students who complete the program will receive the Organizer Leadership Certificate and a campaign leadership badge for each completed project you work on. These include:
- Environmental Conservation Leader Badge
- Waste is out of Fashion Leader Badge
- Youth Vote Leader Badge
- Textbook Affordability Leader Badge
How it works
There are two components of the program:
- Learn the skills: Attend our Activist Classes and learn the skills to be an effective organizer. Learn how to make change on environmental issues from experts in the field
- Make an impact: Work on urgent campaigns with a team of students across the country and run a local project to make a difference in your community
The program takes place over the course of 3 weeks over the summer. We have flexible start and end dates to work around your schedule. Participants should expect to have a 10 hours/week commitment to complete the full program. Here is a general breakdown of a 4 week program:
- Week 1: Attend a virtual Activist Bootcamp to learn the basics of grassroots organizing and choose a Campaign Project you want to organize in your community.
- Week 2-3: Work with a campaign coordinator to implement your plan. You will receive one-on-one guidance with an experienced organizer remotely while you organize on your own campus. The goal of this project is to give you hands-on experience educating your community about the issues and advocating to decision-makers.
- Week 3: Work with our Career Experts to get connected with future opportunities in social change organizing, including: internships, campaign leadership roles, part-time and full-time jobs. By completing the full program, you will earn your certificate and campaign badge. You can earn multiple badges over the course of the semester.
Learn the Skills
Learn organizing and leadership skills from experienced organizers to help you effectively engage your community on the issues you care about. Here are some of the skills you will learn:
- How to craft and deliver and campaign and personal story
- Building a team of student volunteers and leaders
- How to use peer-to-peer tactics to mobilize students (phonebanking, class announcements, and in person events)
- Organizing strategic in person and online actions and events
- Developing campaign coalitions
- And more!
You will also have a chance to learn from leading experts in various issue fields to apply the latest insights and learning to your organizing work.
Make an Impact on Issues
Students will join campaign teams of students to organize a campaign action in their community by the end of the program. In addition to skills training, you will have one-on-one support from campaign coordinators who will help you create a plan to achieve the goals for your specific campaign.
By completing the goals of the project, you will receive the campaign leadership badge. Our campaign projects this summer include:
Waste is out of Fashion
The fashion and clothing industry generates massive amounts of waste — and emits a lot of pollution in the process. Clothing and other textile waste is the fastest growing waste stream in the country. Around the world, the equivalent of one dump truck filled with clothing is sent to a landfill or incinerator every second, and more than $100 billion worth of materials are wasted each year.
What makes this waste all the more outrageous is that millions of these clothing items are never even worn. A staggering 30% of all clothes made around the world are never sold.
Campaign Actions:
- Create a thrift and sustainable store guide. Publicize (online and in person) in your local community
- Host a community educational event. Some ideas:
- Host a Thrift store tour and educate people about the importance of sustainable fashion.
- Host a sewing group workshop for basic garment repairs
- Host a clothing swap
- Get local thrift stores and businesses to sign on to a letter of support
Break Free From Plastics
Plastic pellets, known as nurdles, are tiny beads of plastic made from gas or oil. They are used to make water bottles, plastic bags and countless other items. Lightweight and numerous, they often spill during transport. Once in the environment, these tiny pellets can cause huge problems.
Host a Nurdle Hunt at a local beach, river, or waterway to look for plastic pellet pollution and record what they find, so we can all have a better understanding of where this pollution is happening.
Campaign Actions:
- Create a data report of your nurdle hunt to present to local decision makers and educate the public
- Host a nurdle hunt at a local beach, river, or waterway. Bring some friends and ID other volunteers in the community to work with
- Get media coverage by inviting media to your event or writing a letter to the editor
Save the Bees
Bee populations are dying off at an alarming rate and without these important pollinators we wouldn’t have many of the foods we enjoy today. In short, no bees means no food. So we are encouraging our campuses and local communities to make commitments to become Bee Friendly.
Campaign Actions:
- Create a guide about native bees in your area. Educate your community by collecting petitions and passing out the guide
- Host a community educational event. Some ideas:
- Hold an educational table at your local Farmers Market or Library
- Host a pot painting or seed planting action
- Partner with a local restaurant and have them label everything that is pollinated by bees
- Meet with your City Council Members and Mayor about making a Bee Friendly City Commitment
Hunger and Homelessness
No one should have to worry about whether they will have food on their plate or a roof over their head. But the reality is that hunger and homelessness are widespread problems that affect far too many people. There are a lot of ways to address the issue from volunteering locally, educating community members about the issue, and advocating for policy solutions.
Campaign Actions:
- Create a service project guide and publicize in your local community
- Recruit some friends to participate in a local service project in your community
- Get 3 community organizations to sign on as a PIRG Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week partner
Right to Repair
Companies don’t make things like they used to, and that’s a big problem. Manufacturers of cell phones, medical devices, appliances and even tractors have implemented various legal, digital and physical barriers that prevent consumers from doing their own repairs or using independent repair shops.
The result is a massive amount of waste — in fact, electronic waste is now the fastest growing waste stream in the world. Americans purchase about 160 million new smartphones each year — a habit that takes some 23.7 million tons of raw material to satisfy. Continuing to extract, produce and consume electronics at this rate is simply not sustainable.
Campaign Actions:
- Create a local repair guide to highlight local repair shops and resources in your community
- Host an educational event at a farmers market or local library. Work with local groups to do a presentation on repair
- Get media coverage by inviting media to your event or writing a letter to the editor
New Voters Project
Young people represent the largest group of potential voters in the county, but our voices are not heard because we don’t vote consistently in elections. Learn how to make your campus #voteready for upcoming local elections by building a vote coalition on your campus and making a vote action plan.
Campaign Actions:
- Hosting a voter registration drive on campus
- Connect with existing campus vote coalitions and host a joint event
Training Calendar
Here is the schedule for the various training cycles this summer. After attending an Activist Training Boot Camp you will start your 3 week program cycle.
We will also hold a number of supplementary trainings to help you effectively work on your organizing projects.
|
Training Program |
Date of Boot Camp |
Time of Boot Camp |
End Date of Training Cycle |
|
Activist Boot Camp Virtual Session #1 |
Monday, Septermber 8, 2025 |
5 – 6:30pm ET // 2 – 3:30pm PT |
September 27, 202th |
|
Activist Boot Camp Virtual Session #2 |
Monday October 6, 2025 |
5 – 6:30pm ET // 2 – 3:30pm PT |
October 25, 2025 |
|
Activist Boot Camp Virtual Session #3 |
Monday November 3, 2025 |
5 – 6:30pm ET // 2 – 3:30pm PT |
November 22, 2025 |
Issue Specific Trainings and Briefings
Trainings will be added throughout the semester. Some times and dates are subject to change.
New Voters Project
A special New Voters Project virtual seminar will take place on September 16th, 2025.
Waste is out of Fashion
Fashion waste is scary! We want to promote a sustainable Halloween celebration. A special Waste is out of Fashion virtual seminar will take place in late October, date and time TBD.
Hunger and Homelessness
A special Hunger and Homelessness virtual seminar will take place in late November, date and time TBD.
About Us
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Students have the power to shape the future we will inherit. We work with professional staff at colleges and universities to make sure our peers have the skills, opportunities and training they need to create a better, more sustainable future for all of us. Our chapters and clubs on nearly 100 campuses in 25 states provide the training, professional support and resources students need to tackle climate change, protect public health, revitalize our democracy, feed the hungry and more. Students have been at the forefront of social change throughout history, from civil rights, to voting rights to protecting the environment. For nearly 50 years we’ve helped students to get organized, mobilized and energized so they can continue to be on the cutting edge of positive change.
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The environment is the most important challenge the world faces today. There are plenty of ideas out there for solving environmental problems, from renewable energy to wilderness protection. There are not enough people out there, however, who can transform these ideas into reality. That’s what organizers do. We build people-powered organizations and run grassroots campaigns to change public policies and corporate practices. With Green Corps, you learn how to transform ideas into impact with a combination of classroom training and field experience on critical environmental campaigns. As the country’s most respected training program for environmental organizers, Green Corps has graduated 400 organizers to work on the most urgent environmental issues of our time.
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