
September 12, 2025
Six months since the launch of the Activism, Influence and Change Programme at LSE, Duncan Green shares an update on the course and what will be coming next.
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From Salaamz to the Streets: Three Lessons from Kenya’s June 2024 Protests
August 26, 2025
‘This movement wasn’t led by one person; it was collective and organic…’ Bill Omondi and Beverly Wakiaga reflect on last year’s protests to offer some thought on how INGOs and progressive organisations can show real solidarity.
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Want to make change happen? Check out this free online course
May 15, 2025
Duncan Green introduces the brand-new edition of an Oxfam course for changemakers that he helped to design. And you can now learn how to make change happen in Arabic, French and Spanish, as well as English…
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Don’t start with the issue, start with the people: lessons from a legend of community organising
May 8, 2025
Duncan Green reviews a new book by a giant in the field of community organising and explores the differences between that approach to driving change and the policy-focused advocacy typically used by NGOs.
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What do 70 Masters students from around the world want to campaign on?
November 17, 2023
I’ve just spent a busy few days giving feedback on students’ proposals for their assignments in my activism class at the LSE, which I teach along with Tom Kirk. For this they have to pick a topic that they feel strongly about, and design an influencing strategy to achieve a positive change. They have to work through the course content
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New Version of the free online ‘Make Change Happen’ course launched this week – check it out
October 3, 2023
One of the more enjoyable things I’ve been involved in at Oxfam in recent years is the Make Change Happen MOOC (Massive Open Online Course – where have you been?). A new version is launching this week – if you haven’t already done it, let me try and persuade you to sign up/promote it to your networks. When joining the
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Effective Activism in a Time of Coronavirus: what are we learning six months in?
July 10, 2020
Kirsty McNeill of Save the Children had a great piece on Global Dashboard this week. It mainly focuses on the UK, but I think its relevance is much wider than that. I’ve cut down the original for the tl;dr community, but if you have time, do read the full post here. In a fight between a rewind and a revolution,
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Against fascism in India: in solidarity, through care
February 26, 2020
Enda Verde and Chandan Kumar write about how women are leading the resistance against the unconstitutional Citizenship Amendment Act in India. Enda Verde is a Ph.D. candidate working in both Europe and India. Chandan Kumar is a labor rights activist based in Pune, India, and part of a citizen’s movement against the Citizenship Amendment Act called “Hum Bharat Ke Log.”
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Two new Manuals for Activists, with some useful lessons
August 13, 2019
I’ve been taking advantage of the summer lull to skim some of the backlog of tomes that have accumulated on my study floor. Some were so bad and/or obscure that they really don’t deserve a mention, but two on activism got my attention. First up, Be the Change by Gina Martin. Full disclosure, I bought this by mistake, mixing up
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Meet the artist changing gut reactions to the Philippines ‘war on drugs’
July 5, 2019
Jay Ramirez writes about Carlo Gabuco’s visceral, intimate and poignant depictions of Duterte’s ‘war on drugs’ in the Philippines. Some brilliant insights on the power of art that bring the concept of human rights “down to the gut.” In an art fair in Manila in March last year, one installation caught everybody’s eye. A blue single-seater armchair sits in the
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How to have Difficult Conversations
May 10, 2019
This piece on Open Democracy by my old friend Marcela Lopez Levy has stayed with me since it was posted a week ago, so thought I would repost it. Campaigners aren’t known for being contemplative. By definition they are trying to change something beyond themselves, and the stereotype of an outgoing extrovert with a megaphone exists because in part, it’s true.
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Please help me answer some scary smart student questions on Power and Systems
January 29, 2019
Tomorrow night I am doing an ‘ask me anything’ session on skype with some students from Guelph University in Canada, who have been reading How Change Happens. They have sent an advance list of questions, which are really sharp. I’d appreciate your views on 3 in particular: Are there important differences to note between processes of long-term change and temporary
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