Join EPIP Boston at the 2015 City Awake Festival for Social Impact!

This participatory workshop will lay the foundation for understanding how social movements are built, function, and sustain themselves, with a strong emphasis on collective action. We will define “social movement” and explore the many aspects it encompasses, including rallies, campaigns, legislation, and organizations. We will also clarify some common misconceptions. Depending on the group composition, we will cover specific issue areas. After attending, participants will be able to place their work—and, more importantly, themselves—within the context of a social movement.

Register now (via form below) — EPIP Boston’s first annual City Awake Festival event last year had a full house!

Workshop Leaders: Christina Gray and Dhakir Warren

Christina Gray’s work making positive social change spans from grassroots to grant-making. She started protesting at age eight by climbing into a tree to prevent bulldozers from using her public park as a building ground. Later, she led her high school’s Civil Rights Team, co-founded its civic engagement club, was a delegate at—and is now an advisor to—the National Conference for Community and Justice’s diversity, leadership, and social justice camp ANYTOWN, and is a 2011 AmeriCorps Alumni. After earning a sociology degree in diversity and social inequality, she sought lasting solutions to the injustice she experienced, observed, and studied. Christina now works for Hunt Alternative’s Prime Movers program supporting social-movement leaders. The program invests in men and women who seek to bend the arc of history toward justice, believing it would see a significant return on investment as these individuals engage millions in pursuit of social change, thereby strengthening civic engagement across the United States.

Dhakir Warren is senior manager of social innovation for Hunt Alternative’s Demand Abolition program. He is returning home to Boston from Los Angeles, where he spent the last year working on the development and pilot of Markham Summer Camp in Watts. Dedicated to serving under-resourced youth residing in housing developments in South Central Los Angeles, the camp focuses on reducing engagement in at-risk behaviors by this vulnerable youth population through the delivery of summer activities focused on providing positive youth development opportunities, academic enrichment, and mental health and wellness support. Prior to moving to Los Angeles, Dhakir served as managing director of Youth Design Boston, a nonprofit that provides creative urban youth with educational pathways to the design industry through design education and paid summer design jobs. He attended Wheaton College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in international relations. He then attended Tufts University’s M.A.T. program, after which he spent three years working as a high school humanities teacher in the Boston Public Schools. Dhakir took a leap into the world of marketing when he joined the public relations department at Waltham-based Constant Contact. He is a strategic thinker and visionary who brings a broad range of skills to his role. In his spare time, Dhakir loves to travel and spend time with his family. He also likens himself to an amateur chef.