Do you want to know how you can make positive changes in your communities? If so, ‘How to be a Community Advocate and Make Change’ is the course for you. You don’t need lots of money and power to make a difference. You just have to be committed to working with others in the community to make the changes your community wants to see. This course will give you the chance to learn from a number of community advocates who have worked with communities across the North to make positive changes. This course aims to inspire you about the potential of being a community advocate, while giving you some guidance and tools to be one in your communities.

At the People’s Powerhouse, we work with so many fantastic community advocates from across the North who work with their communities to make meaningful changes. In this introduction, you met one of them, Nazir Afzal OBE. Nazir is the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for the North West, and first practicing Muslim to be appointed to this post, who focused his efforts on tackling cases involving violence against women and girls, child sexual exploitation and honour based violence. He supports a number of organisations to make an even bigger difference to their community, including Hopwood Hall College in Greater Manchester, the Welsh Government and the People’s Powerhouse, working to amplify the voices of people in the debate about their future.

We believe that any of you can be a community advocate and make change. Whether you are studying business, the arts, sciences, politics or law, if you want to make a difference in your community, then this course is for you and it will help you get started.

In this course, you will learn what a community advocate is, some examples from history and how you can be one.  You will learn about it directly from community advocates themselves, people who have and continue to make a difference in their communities every day. From them, you will learn about some of the key principles of being a community advocate and the practical steps and actions you can take to be one. The course will then help you apply what you have learnt and take the next steps in your journey as a community advocate.

We hope you will take the course and get started on the next part of your journey as a community advocate.