About Community Change and Community Change Action:

Community Change builds the power and capacity of low-income people, especially low-income people of color, to lead powerful and dynamic movements for social change. With our community-based partner groups, we bridge the grassroots and the national, supporting outsider strategies to disrupt the status quo while also building pathways to influence the insider conversation.

Our vision of a better world centers the leadership of impacted people of color to move our work on immigrant rights, economic justice, and racial equity, including a focus on jobs and housing, early childhood care and education, income supports, and immigration reform.

About ChangeWire

ChangeWire.org is an online publication of Community Change, where we publish news, stories, videos, animations, graphics, poetry and more on a range of social and economic justice issues. Our stories from the ground up center stories by and about directly impacted people, grassroots organizers, and progressive leaders. See our ChangeWire editorial guidelines here.

About the fellows program

Our 12-month paid ChangeWire fellowship program is designed to:

• Cultivate the storytelling, journalism, and editorial skills of directly-impacted communities
• Provide emerging storytellers with different platforms for publication and amplification of their work
• Connect directly-impacted storytellers with each other and a wider network of grassroots sources
• Amplify the work of Community Change/Action and our grassroots partners

The curriculum

Our 12-month curriculum with virtual spaces are designed to foster connection and learning between fellows.

The first six months of our curriculum are focused on sharpening your storytelling skills, and includes monthly required virtual learning sessions and assignments and may include topics such as: 

• cultivating relationships with sources
• the art of the interview
• thinking like an editor
• working in new mediums
• pitching your piece

The second half of the year is focused on your personal growth and development as a storyteller, and includes monthly required virtual learning sessions and assignments and may include topics such as:

• mental grit and resilience
• personal promotion and online safety
• ethical storytelling
• peer-to-peer teach-backs

Open positions

Community Change is looking for Writing, Video, and Multimedia Fellows to join our team and tell the stories of real Americans struggling to get by in this economy. We are looking for fellows with a passion for creating social change through powerful storytelling. 

The fellows are writers, reporters, videographers, photographers, podcasters, and graphic artists who tell stories that will lead and broaden conversation around social justice issues, including income support, protecting the safety net, child care, housing, immigration, racial justice and democracy. 

They will produce news articles, opinion pieces, personal essays, poems, video content,  audio content, and other written and/or multimedia content that energize and mobilize people by offering solutions to key issues.

The right candidates are brimming with creativity and looking for unique ways to create and share content that features authentic voices in conversations around policies. An ideal candidate has experience in one or more of these areas: journalism, interviewing, opinion writing, creative writing, photography, video production, podcast production, or graphic design.

They also have lived experience or come from a community of impacted people. The fellow will be responsible for identifying potential stories and sources within their communities or connecting with Community Change/Action’s grassroots partners. 

The fellow will produce content from idea to realization, writing pieces that are accessible and free of jargon or overly academic language. Our audiences are growing on social media channels and on our own ChangeWire.org, so we are looking for storytellers who are also savvy about how to optimize story promotion on a variety of platforms.

This position is uniquely suited for highly self-motivated individuals with organizing or political experience or experience fighting for economic and social justice issues. Our Content staff will serve as a coaching/editorial team to help advise and grow the fellows’ storytelling skills.

Community Change is also looking for one fellow who will be assigned a specialized beat around child care, interviewing and producing stories about providers, parents, and supporters who are part of our movement to build a 21st century child care system. This fellow will participate in the same curriculum as the rest of the cohort. If you are interested in this role, please check the “child care storyteller” box on the application form.

Key Responsibilities:

• Produce and publish 2 original pieces of content per month through collaboration with an advisory editor, with flexibility for longer-form pieces. At least one of these pieces per month will be for original publication on ChangeWire, with flexibility for others to be pitched and placed with outside outlets
• Develop story ideas with your advisory editor that don’t just help explain how economic and social issues affect everyday people’s lives, but also show the grassroots and community organizing and solutions everyday people have the power to make possible
• Work with your advisory editor to develop story ideas that advance Community Change/Action priority issues and grassroots partners
• Pieces should include the perspectives and experiences of directly-impacted people. Including your own lived experiences counts and is encouraged
• Participate in mandatory, once-monthly virtual learning sessions and curriculum assignments
• Help promote your published works with your networks, on social media, through our monthly ChangeWire newsletter, and other channels

Qualifications:

A successful candidate will be someone who understands grassroots organizing and deeply values the goal of building the power of communities, especially low-income communities and communities of color, and sees the amplification of low-income voices as a key component to achieving social justice. A successful candidate will have her or his own voice as a storyteller, but also an interest in facilitating and amplifying the voices of low-income members of their community. The fellows know what it means to struggle to get by and understand what it means when families work hard to thrive.

Specific qualifications include:

• Demonstrated experience as a storyteller in one (or more) of these areas: Writing, reporting, photography, video or filmmaking, podcasting, animation, poetry, social media content creation.
• Directly impacted by social justice issues or from targeted communities where Community Change/Action works with grassroots partners.  Diverse constituents preferred, including grassroots organizers, advocacy journalists, single moms struggling to make ends meet, and every day Americans with lived experiences in social, racial and gender justice issues.
• Creative ability to frame ideas, develop stories, and produce a final product in a way that appeals to a wide variety of audiences.
• High degree of comfort in developing new relationships, conducting interviews, and reaching out to potential partners, sources, and storytellers.
• Wide degree of comfort using social media.
• Demonstrated cultural competency and awareness and that worldview are aligned with Community Change/Action.

Stipend: 

Fellows will work on a 12-month contract and receive a monthly stipend of $800.

How to apply: 

Please fill out this application which will ask you to answer a few questions, submit a personal statement, and include examples of your work. If you have questions about the application, feel free to reach out to crayas@communitychange.org and dghanem@communitychange.org. Incomplete applications will not be considered. 

We will be reviewing applications on a rolling basis, with priority given to those who apply by Nov. 4, 2024.