People's Organizing Weekend Empowerment Retreat (POWER)

The purpose of POWER is to empower student activists, who have previous experience organizing and/or participating in activities centered on the tenets of social justice. You will enhance your tool kits for the purpose of community organizing. Our goal is for you to create spaces strategically and effectively for intentional and culturally specific planning. The focus is on coalition building while allowing you to work as allies and collaborators at NIU.

POWER was developed using many sources, including the Grassroots Organizing Weekend, sponsored by the United States Student Association. In January 2017, we held our own community-organizing weekend called, Community Organizing Retreat Experience (CORE). Students said the retreat impacted their activism and solidified coalitions to support particular groups of marginalized students that felt a heightened sense of trauma and of being targeted. The 2019 schedule was our best retreat to date at offering student activists the tools they need for community organizing.

POWER will be offered in sSpring 2022 on January 21-23, 2022. An application is required.