Campaign training with the NWPC-WA
After the 2016 election a friend of mine suggested I go to A women’s campaign training, what she did not know is attended the training years earlier and have worked on two campaigns and volunteered for countless candidates. I thought about the training and realized when I attended there was no suggestions for candidates how to get and work with volunteers, something I knew about. I proposed a speech on the topic and found myself signed up to address 100 women who intend to run for office.
I spent some time recording what my experiences had been, what failed and what went well. Then I started to research the guides that I had not read in years. Reading everything I could I did not want to miss anything due to gaps in my knowledge and experiences.
Talking to those I knew I was able to get meetings with a previous leader within the Texas Democratic Party as well as a field organizer from a campaign who I had volunteered with and had done a wonderful job at maintaining volunteers. Each had great things they had tried, some successful some failures and some simply un-measurable.
With everything I put together a PowerPoint working out prioritization of the stories that I wanted to tell and points to cover, practiced, cut slides and added more. Then practiced more.
As the day approached I got a call from the director of the National Womans Political Caucus of Washington requesting a photographer for their campaign training. Laughing I said yes as photographing would help distract me from getting too nervous before speaking.
The whole event went off without a hitch, here’s to hoping that all of the women decide to run for office or support others who do.
Laura Zera of the Seattle Times puts it perfectly in her article covering the event:
Pérez laughs as she recounts the terror she felt the day she attended her first NWPC-WA class, but says it doesn’t have to be that way.
“When you go, you will start realizing, ‘OK, this is the plan I have to follow, and I’ve done this before in other areas of my life.’ ” Which is to say, the best kind of training is the one that shows you the leader that already exists within.”
See the Full article from the Seattle Times on how "Political training can be a good career move"
http://www.seattletimes.com/nwshowcase/careers/political-training-can-be-a-good-career-move/
Also if you are interested in links for managing volunteers in your campaign some great ones can be found here.
http://www.localvictory.com/organization/train-your-political-volunteers.html
