Creating Your Vision

What is your vision for the campus and/or community?

I hope to engage and mobilize unregistered potential voters in five target cities throughout the state of Michigan. The focus areas of choice are Ypsilanti, Kalamazoo, Flint, Benton Harbor & Saginaw, MI.

Assessing Your Campus and Community

What campus/community problem does your blueprint address? What structures, practices and policies institutionalize the problem?

Michigan has a large base of unregistered and disengaged voters of all ages. The hope of this project is to fill that need and engage those individuals that are not mobilized for the 2008 election. We also hope to build upon their interests by engaging them with the power to vote, training them on how to lead in their individual target areas and show them how to engage others. I believe this would start a process of inclusive non-partisan voter mobilization and outreach.

What communities will you work with?

• Statewide community

Setting Goals and Deliverables

• Goal 1: Register 1,500-3,000 people to vote in each target area
• Every two weeks organizers in target cities and the lead staff member will report numbers of newly registered voters. This will be useful to evaluate our progress and determine whether or not we need to change our course of action to register new voters. If we are not reaching our target number midway through summer then we will alter our technique of registering potential voters.
• Goal 2: Train 15-25 new leaders within the five different target areas
• The training of new leaders will be evaluated by surveying the trainees after each session. The survey will be anonymous and given to each trainee after each session to get a perspective on the usefulness of the program. We will also survey organizers and new trainee together at the end of the election to get perspectives on how things could have been different. We will also be able to evaluate the success of our training by their efficiency in the field
• Goal 3: Execute one town hall meeting prior to the 2008 election in each target area
• The town hall meetings will be evaluated by a participant survey that will be anonymous and given to each attendee. These surveys will help us sharpen our perspective on what the community needs are as well as how to mobilize them around their interests.

What is your primary approach? Organizing

Why did you choose this approach?

Did you have secondary approaches? What are they?

We will be utilizing networking and alliance building to identify leaders and create leadership opportunities for them, by organizing town hall meetings in each target area.

What will your tactics and activities be?

Target Areas: Benton Harbor, MI, Flint, MI, Kalamazoo, MI, Saginaw, MI, Ypsilanti, MI
Activities: Voter Registration, Training of new community leaders, Execution of 5 town hall meetings

Goals
• Register 1,500- 3,000 new voters in targeted cities.
• Train 15-25 new leaders throughout the state on voter registration and hosting town hall meetings.
• Execute 5 town hall meetings prior to the election in each targeted cities.

How this will happen?
Registering people to vote: Utilizing the Voter Activation Network (VAN), through partnership with Michigan Voice and Center for Civic Participation, we will target homes of individuals and families that are not currently registered. This will be our main tool for identifying un-registered potential voters. We will also use public events and voter registration drives in local community centers to attract and register new voters. New strategies will develop over time if we find that there our approach is not working effectively.

Train 15-25 new leaders statewide
While we are registering new voters in each target area we will be engaging people in the voting and political process. These conversations, depending on interest level, will prepare us to recruit for community organizing leaders who will participate in political action trainings. Another way we will be identifying leaders is through our demographic and issue identification process. Each newly registered voter will be asked to fill out a brief demographic and issue; this will allow us to ask additional information about interest levels. The training of these new leaders will give us a base of leadership with potential to grow in each area to host town hall meetings are continue to have a network of people to register locals to vote.

Training materials will come from various sources. We hope to tailor each community organizing training to the target areas interests and current skill set. Thus far, we hope to incorporate Young People For, People for the American Way, training materials as well as our own original experiential learning techniques.

Execute 5 town hall meetings (one in each city)
As a part of the community organizing training we will host a town hall meeting in each of these target cities. This will be a way to provide newly registered voters and newly engaged leaders to participate in the process a step further. This would be the last component to our community organizing training. Additional training and projects will be discussed and planned for based on the level of community participation.

How we will collect key demographic data? (see attached example)
In order to collect the necessary demographic information we ask people who are registering to vote to fill out a short 1/3 of a page sheet of paper asking them specific demographic and issue identification information. There is an example attached.


Get Out the Vote (GOTV)
Our GOTV efforts will be designed by the organizers in each target area, with assistance from the lead organizer.

Connecting Back to Vision

How does your strategy contribute to your vision for your campus and/or your community?

Our project will allow us to assist in build or add upon a group of engaged individuals with local interests in mind. I think this will be a much more sustainable project if we focus on local issues and organize in local target areas. This way they are invested in their communities and will hopefully continue to work for progress.

Resources and skills you will need

What skills do you need for this approach?

I need fundraising help. I want to continue this project past the election cycle and would like help forming a non profit and seeking grant money to do so.