Watch trainees reflect on their learning from Citizens UK Training opportunities here.

Andrew Pendleton is Policy and Advocacy Director at the New Economics Foundation. He attended National Community Leadership Training in July 2017 and wrote an article about his experience:

"I don’t like training courses. And I like 6-day training courses even less.

You know how it goes. Icebreakers; people who talk too much; people who say nothing; worst-case scenario David Brent-style speakers.

Thankfully, Citizens UK had none of this. Perhaps I was lucky, but absolutely everyone — at least everyone in the 50 per cent of participants on the ‘track’ I ended up in — was brilliant. Because of this, and because of the calm, personal, insightful approach of the three organiser-trainers who stewarded us through our 6 days, I loved it."

You can read the full article here.

Rev Canon Andy Griffiths is involved in the development of Citizens Essex as well as being Co-ordinator of Training for New Ministers in the Diocese of Chelmsford. He participated in the training in July 2018, and has since cascaded parts of the training into his own organisation:

"In the short-term I believe that I can make a real difference to the culture and direction of the Diocese of Chelmsford by using these tools to train new ministers. Long-term I believe a Citizens alliance in Essex will thrive too.”

“I’ve built aspects of the Citizens model into our own training and promised our curates that if they have a proper 1-2-1 conversation every week, in three years they’ll be the best-connected people in their community, including their vicar.”

Rev Carole Challis is Co-superintendent of the Vale of Glamorgan Methodist Circuit and Co-chair of Citizens Cymru Wales. She also participated in the National Community Leadership Training in July 2018:

"During the week, we explored power as “the ability to make change”, when to compromise, how to take small effective actions, and winning a small step rather than trying to change everything at once.

We used role play, one to one meetings, storytelling, developed strategies and learnt key concepts for our organising such as “Action is to organising as oxygen is to our bodies”, highlighting the importance of public action to bring about change on injustice issues becoming a habit for our organising as institutions."

You can read her full reflection here.