As a movement training organization, our mission is to apply the power of narrative to organizing, movement building, and social transformation. Our dream is a movement of movements with the power, creativity, and vision to change the world by changing the stories that shape our collective destiny.
CSS is dedicated to holistic social change practices — shifting from issues to values, supplementing organization building with movement building, and exploring creative new strategies for confronting systemic problems. We believe that people-powered grassroots movements, led by those who are most directly affected, are the engines of true social progress.
CSS convenes innovators from different movements to share ideas and reconsider strategies in the timeless endeavor of social change. The heartbeat of the work-building relationships, critical thinking, action, and reflection — remains constant. But these practices evolve with new technologies, tools, and techniques. Over the course of our work, we’ve recognized that innovation doesn’t just mean improving what is already happening; innovation requires rethinking underlying assumptions and finding the courage to re-imagine what could happen.
Innovation requires creative thinking and testing hunches
with real world experiments.