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COMMUNITY
OUTREACH ANALYSIS December 22, 2000
OUTREACH ANALYSIS Overall, I think that the community outreach was very successful; generally we received very positive responses to the project as a whole and to our requests for assistance in networking, outreach and alternative publicity. Below, you will find a break-down of which groups were generally most appreciative, helpful and will most likely continue to build a mutually supportive, long-term relationship with Headlines. As well, there were organizations that were somewhat disappointing in their level of support, and perhaps promised to help out more than they actually did, in the end. In the new year, I hope to find time to update the Headlines database, as well as my own records created for this project so as to document and make easily accessible which organizations can or will be able to assist Headlines most in further projects. Finally, I will be making suggestions for future community outreach, both within the context of a major Headlines project, and in on-going day-to- day work. Attached at the end of this report is a list of all organisations which assisted in outreach/networking for Corporate U.
LARGER ORGANIZATIONS (these are the largest of the organizations contacted, those with full-time staff, more resources, and whose primary focuses are on the issues most relevant to Corporate U) Most of the larger community organizations were incredibly helpful in disseminating information to its members (and beyond its own membership base, for that matter). Of note, the BC Centre for Policy Alternatives did a fair amount of networking for us, via email lists and within Trading Strategies. The Canadian Federation of Students-BC Component was also very helpful by distributing postcards and posters to all of its member organizations within the province. The Council of Canadians also supported the project, although they went through a major staff change within their office during the middle of production, so it was naturally not high on their list of priorities. They are, however, a perfect future source of information and outreach in the future. Within the larger trade union community, there was less assistance providing in disseminating information. Certainly, we found support within individual unions and rank-and-file members, however, I expected to find more tangible networking assistance from both the BC Federation of Labour and the Vancouver and District Labour Council than they actually provided in the end Organizers within both organizations thought that Corporate U was a great idea and supported it. Partially the lack of support given can be attributed to the fact that real information dissemination is difficult to achieve these days without functioning email lists (which both organizations are lacking at this time). Also, I found myself often bounced back and forth between different workers in the organizations, which made good communication and planning difficult.
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