Skills Trainings
What is a skills training?
A skills training is an experience that helps develop students' capacities and skills to meaningfully engage in the community. Specifically, skills trainings seek to cultivate competencies related to: working in the nonprofit world or social sector, being an active democratic citizen, collaborating, working on collective solutions, and working across lines of difference.
We have included examples of the types of skills that would fall under each category; note that this is not an exhaustive list, but rather is meant to clarify the competencies.
- Competency 1: Working in the NonProfit World or Social Sector
- Project Management: planning, management, evaluation, event-planning, administrative skills
- Skills for Organizations: mission-building, organizational assessment
- Fundraising, Grant Writing, and Philanthropy
- Competency 2: Being an Active Democratic Citizen
- Advocacy, Activism
- Political Organizing, Voter Registration, etc.
- Policy Work
- Competency 3: Collaborating
- Teamwork, Leadership, Interpersonal Skills
- Communication Skills
- Group facilitation, Teaching skills
- Partner or Coalition Building
- Competency 4: Working on Collective Solutions
- Awareness-Raising
- Problem Solving, Critical Thinking
- Collaborative, Applied Research; Data analysis and Presentation
- Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation
- Competency 5: Working Across Lines of Difference
- Diversity and Cultural Competence
- Community Organizing
- Being an Effective Ally
If a skills training does not fit into one of the above categories but students feel it fits within the scope of the program, you may appeal for it to count as an Engagement-Specific Training. An engagement-specific training develops skills that contribute to one's ability to do specific community-based work that do not neatly fit into the categories above.
To count as a skills training, the workshop/training must:
- Cover skills that benefit not only oneself, but the community, through enabling you to better contribute to organizations, projects, campaigns, and events that work for the public good.
- Must be in-person, interactive, and designed for participants to build and practice skills. Events in which participants gain information or awareness must be documented as learning opportunities.
- Can be on or off-campus, hosted by academic departments, campus offices, partner organizations, or other community stakeholders.
- Must last at least one hour.
- Each training used to fulfill the requirements of the program must occur on separate days, in order to spread out learning (iecannot count a longer conference as two skills trainings or attend back-to-back workshops).
Skills Trainings and Post-Event Reflections Goals
- Develop students' skills and capacities in ways that will assist them in their current and future work as change agents.
- Help students identify skills that they need to develop in the future to be able to better contribute to the community, and in so doing strategically plan for their own development.
- Foster critical self-awareness of students' own capacity to contribute to community, including their limits.
- Reflect on the capacity and skills already held in communities to address problems impacting them, as well as the unequal ways skills are distributed such that some groups are more empowered than others.
- Develop confidence in students' ability to influence positive social change by increasing their skill sets.
- Give students the lexicon and training needed to be able to articulate their strengths and skills for future employers and program applications.
Currently Scheduled Skills Trainings
Other Skills Trainings on Campus
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Training |
Description |
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P.I.F.P. Public Interest Fellows Program Orientation |
Offered to accepted PIFP fellows, this training offers a range of skills that can be applied to work within the nonprofit sector. |
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Advocacy Training |
Coming Soon! |
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Wellness Resource Center Trainings |
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BADASS - Being Aware, Deciding to Act, and Saying Something - trainings provide you the skills to help you prevent sexual and relationship violence, respond to people in distress, and create an inclusive community. |
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Story-Telling for Social Change |
This training increases skills related to: public speaking, self-awareness, and understanding of social change processes. |
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Mental Health First Aid |
This training offers skills related to understanding mental health issues, peer counseling, and referral skills. |
|
Creating Trauma-Informed Environments |
This training offers an understanding of trauma as it relates to systems and processes, communication, and empathy skills. |
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QPR |
This training offers skills of understanding mental health issues, peer counseling skills, and referral skills. |
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Self-Care for Activists |
This training increases skills related to stress management, communication, persistence/grit, self-awareness, and social change processes. |
In addition, we encourage you to consider how the following might provide you skills for your engaged work. These trainings are not necessarily related to community engagement, but could be depending on your current community work, interests, or engaged career goals.
- Elevate - A leadership workshop series for student organizations that want to elevate their skills and success to the next level, sponsored by Campus Activities in collaboration with CCSGA. If these workshops connect to your work with engaged student organizations, we encourage you to think about how these skills might benefit your community work broadly.
- Wellness Resource Center workshops - The WRC offers several workshops that could potentially give you skills related to your engaged work, depending on how you work with the community - the group facilitation, communication for group facilitation, emotional intelligence skills, skills for managing group dynamics, story-telling for healing, or journaling series.
- Career Center Workshops - The Career Center offers several workshops aimed to give you skills for post graduate experiences and employment. If these trainings offer you skills necessary to work in a public interest field, you might consider how these skills benefit your future (or current) community work.