Why ACT? Why a “Toolkit” (we will come back to that word, and the words “active” and “citizenship” another time.
Well, to sort of repeat some of what you will find on the page about the assumptions underlying this toolkit, it’s because social movement organisations far too often go up like a rocket and down like a stick.
There are lots of reasons for this, including –
- Issue resolved (battle won or lost)
- Police , state, corporate co-optation through to repression
- Personality conflicts
- Political splits
But another reason is that people drift away because they either feel not useful/needed/appreciated/stretched-when-they-would like.
And the point of the toolkit is to make it easier for individuals, and especially groups, to figure out how to keep people involved (and after a while, that is going to mean attracting more people, because people who are having a good time talk to each other people about what they are doing, and are clearly getting loads from it.)
The point of the Toolkit is to make it easier to figure out what elements (skills, knowledge, relationships) that your group needs now/will need soon, what elements it currently has and what (therefore) are the points where nobody in the group has the element at the right level (i.e. an absolute gap) or only one person does (a single point of failure).
If the Toolkit makes it easier to have those discussions within a group, and between groups, then it has succeeded.
That’s why ACT?