Because of our broad mission to improve the lives of children and families in Miami-Dade County, The Children's Trust has appropriately employed many of the six strategies presented by Barry Checkoway.  Strategies were selected for varying reasons - in some cases in response to a need, and sometimes in order to produce a desired outcome.  Most often, The Trust has been the entity employing the change strategies, but we have also been the targeted by change strategies. 

Examples of mass mobilization tend to be of protest, conflict or confrontation of an issue, process, government, etc.  The Trust has been the focus of a mass mobilization effort which was directed not at protesting something detrimental to the community, rather it was to maintain a positive presence in our community.  Specifically, the campaign in summer 2008 to reauthorize The Children's Trust in perpetuity was an excellent example of mass mobilization.

The strategy employed by the political action committee for The Trust was to mobilize at the grassroots level in order to mitigate conflict that frequently arises around local government initiatives in Miami.  Operationalizing that strategy meant using grassroots and faith-based organizations to communicate The Trust's message, past results and motivate community members to get out the vote.   This effort was hugely successful - The Trust was reauthorized with an overwhelming majority.  The Trust was passed by a majority in all but one voting district and most notably, members of Miami-Dade's African-American community turned out to vote in numbers never seen before in a minor election. 

Checkoway notes that other community researchers have ascribed mass mobilization as a primary strategy for mobilizing the poor to get what they need.  I believe that this observation will become less true as mass mobilization efforts are more often emerging from social networking sites and the blogosphere. The social networking site, Facebook, has an application for Causes which is specifically about mass mobilization and empowering individuals to take action - not just virtually.

Facebook Platform presents an unprecedented opportunity to engage our generation, most of whom are on Facebook, in seizing the future and making a difference in the world around us. Our generation cares deeply, but the current system has alienated us. Causes provides the tools so that any Facebook user can leverage their network of real friends to effect positive change.  The goal of all this is what we call "equal opportunity activism." We're trying to level the playing field by empowering individuals to change the world.

During his campaign for President, Barack Obama demonstrated the sheer power available to harness using modern mass mobilization efforts.  Through blogs, emails and social networking, his campaign had huge success in mobilizing individuals across the country (and the world) as well as resulting in record breaking campaign fundraising in modest increments from individual donors. 

Social Action requires a target; and in order to result in population-wide change or to move the needle on a community indicator it is necessary to direct the social action at the root cause.  This is very difficult to achieve because community indicators and population-based statistics rarely have a single root cause.  Checkoway notes that "successful practice requires the ability to diagnose a situation and apply a variety of approaches to the organization or community context…"  I believe that it is rare for social action to be successful in a broad context when used individually.

 Recently, The Trust was the target of a social action movement.  Last year, The Trust had to reduce its operating budget by $26 million due to reduced revenues from property taxes.  Achieving such a large reduction resulted in budget reductions to every program funded. Our out-of-school programs launched a social action strategy aimed at minimizing what they perceived as disproportionate budget reductions to this program area.  These providers organized town hall meetings, produced videos documenting their programs, contacted local media, and sent materials to our board members. At a minimum, these efforts were successful in raising awareness of our Board about the reach of out-of-school programs.  It is difficult to determine the level of success in minimizing budget reductions because reaching a balanced budget meant cuts at every level of our organization internally and externally.

One of The Trust's more challenging initiatives has been to launch service partnerships in communities through Miami-Dade that are responsible for coordinating services for families in need.  I believe that this is a good example of local services development.  The Trust's goal for these initiatives is to maximize community knowledge about needs and community resources, while also leveraging (not supplanting) other available resources in the broader community context (e.g., insurance programs, WIC, housing assistance).