Take your campaign skills to the next level with Silent Reef’s online activist training courses.
Who needs activist training?
You do, if you’re fighting to protect nature, wildlife, local communities and local businesses from an environmentally damaging issue.
Professional campaigners working for environment NGOs. Concerned citizens forced into taking a stand to protect their home and income. Passionate individuals wanting to make a difference.
Everyone benefits from training.
Hi, I’m Dave Roe, Silent Reef founder and course author, and my aim is the same as your aim – for you to run the most effective campaign you possibly can.
You can find plenty of activist training scattered across the Internet. The problem is that most of it drags you through long explanations of lofty concepts that have no application in the real world where your campaign is locked in a fierce struggle to be heard.
With the clock ticking and work piling up you just want to know what to do and how to do it. The why can take care of itself.
For this reason, Silent Reef courses have a strong focus on the what and the how, with just enough why for you to develop effective approaches of your own.
You can start a course at any time, study at your own pace and return as often as you like for a refresher or inspiration.
Here’s our course promise:
We won’t bog you down in detail or baffle you with abstract theories. We simply tell you what works and how to do it. In plain language.
Silent Reef courses are packed with examples from real and imagined campaigns.
Our courses are global, meaning they work for campaigns run anywhere in the world against any environment issue. You can even use them to tackle social issues, such as racial equality, gender equality, poverty and human rights.
Explore our activist training courses
Currently we have 2 great courses to choose from. You can follow the links to learn about each course or keep reading this page to learn how Silent Reef activist training helps you run more effective campaigns.
Write Effective Campaign Plans
This course is for anyone starting a new campaign or rebooting an existing campaign. You’ll learn practical campaign-planning skills, from understanding what’s going on (researching the issue, targets and audiences) to deciding what you’re going to do about it (setting your campaign goal, strategy, objectives and tactics). At course end you’ll have flexible plan complete with timelines so you know where to start and what to do next.
Tell me more and enrol me in Write Effective Campaign Plans
Communicate Effective Campaign Messages
Communicating with the public is a crucial campaign skill. But just telling people about the issue is not enough – you must motivate and enable them to actively support your campaign. Our Communicate Effective Campaign Messages course shows you how. You’ll learn the latest communication and behaviour change techniques, and how to integrate them into every campaign message you send. Even messages as short as a Tweet.
Tell me more and enrol me in Communicate Effective Campaign Messages
Bonus – Receive a 15% discount when you enrol in both courses!
Are Silent Reef courses right for my campaign?
Silent Reef courses show you how to use two broad campaign strategies – advocacy and behaviour change.
These strategies are not mutually exclusive (you don’t have to choose one or the other), so we show you how to use elements of both in your campaign.
An advocacy strategy works to influence business and government decisions. Advocacy can be persistently persuasive or forcefully demanding. How hard you pull the trigger is determined by the strength of opposition to your campaign.
Typical advocacy campaign goals are to:
- Stop a development
- Create a national park
- Ban a toxic chemical
A behaviour change strategy works to change people’s behaviours that damage the environment. One approach for achieving this is to remove the barriers stopping people making the change, but before you can do this you have to find out what those barriers are.
Typical behaviour change campaign goals are to:
- Stop public littering
- Reduce shark fin soup consumption
- Increase public transport use
And then there’s a public behaviour that all advocacy campaigns must change – the habit of not actively supporting a campaign to achieve its goal.
The principles for gaining active support of an advocacy campaign are the same as the principles for getting people to change a damaging behaviour. Another reason why Silent Reef courses explore both advocacy and behaviour change strategies.
The right activist training when you need it
Here’s the thing – environment campaigns are complex. As complex as the environment issues they work to remedy.
There are no easy fixes.
For your campaign to succeed you must put in the hard yards. Both in campaign development and campaign delivery.
Activist training that ignores this reality – that tells you a snack-sized mini-course is sufficient to your needs – is doing you a disservice.
If most online activist training is like junk food that leaves you hungry for more, then Silent Reef courses are like a good meal in a nice restaurant.
After all, what’s the point of a course that doesn’t answer all your questions?
However, one thing Silent Reef courses are not is dull. Or dense. And completing them is definitely not laborious.
We take things step by step. Each module explores a key topic and is broken down into convenient lessons that build on what you have already learned. Resources help you put your learning into practice.
What’s more, our courses are for life, not just for now. Think of them as a personal mentor that stays by your side throughout your activist campaign and even your activist career.
Your low investment
You’ve seen that most online activist training isn’t fit for purpose.
But what about full-blown qualification courses offered by colleges and universities? Well, these courses can cost $100s and even $1000s and take far too long to complete for over-worked environmental activists like you. And you know what – they’re also heavy on the theory and lacking in practical guidance.
Silent Reef courses sit happily in the middle, priced at an affordable 190 Australian dollars.
That’s roughly 142 United States dollars, 177 Canadian dollars, 102 British pounds and 119 Euros (depending on the current exchange rate).
Not bad for the high level of education that you receive.
Especially when you realise that your investment is not an annual subscription. It buys you ongoing access to a course that is regularly updated with the latest campaign strategies, activities and technologies.
Try getting that level of return from a textbook.
But in case you’re still concerned about making an investment in your campaign or career, read on to find out how to get started risk free.
Experience advanced activist training risk free
Even with our affordable pricing I want this to be a risk free decision for you. So, enrol now to gain access to your course for 14 days to see what you think.
If after that time you’re unhappy with your decision simply contact us to receive a full refund. No questions asked.
Now, with all the risk removed, let’s get started with your activist training.
Nature needs you now!
I want to:
Write Effective Campaign Plans – Plan your path to campaign success from tactics to goal
Communicate Effective Campaign Messages – Develop and deliver campaign messages that turn a passive public into active supporters
Bonus – Receive a 15% discount when you enrol in both courses!