Social Change 101: Preview a Chapter from our Social Change Handbook

You can now listen to the audiobook of our social change handbook, The Changemaker In You, for FREE, as part of our free Social Change 101 training. This is our complete beginners training, but we've had feedback from experienced activists and changemakers who found the framework valuable. Here's a preview of the introductory chapter to check if it's right for you!

Introduction: Social Change 101

This book takes a holistic, individualistic approach to social change… okay, Tiyana, so what does that mean? Well, holistic is a fancy way of saying that it looks at the whole picture of social change.

A lot of people think about social change as very formal changes like policy or legislative change (I know I did when I began my journey), and while these are indeed examples of social change, they are only a small part of a much bigger picture.

This book also aims to help young people understand what different types of social change tangibly look like when they are realised within a society and what your role as an individual is in driving each particular type of social change— that’s the individualistic part. This book isn’t a definitive sociological study that will unpack all the invisible power structures, relationships, and processes that exist within a society and allow things to change or remain the same over time. However, I will be drawing on various sociological concepts.

Social change is defined as changes in social institutions, social behaviours, or social relations. This is a pretty crummy definition of social change if you ask me, so I’ll explain it in a bit more detail.

When you think about social change, think of it as the outcome of certain actions or processes, not the actions or processes themselves.

For example, in the Civil Rights era, things like the Montgomery Bus Boycotts, Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream” speech, or the Freedom Riders of 1961 aren’t examples of social change. They were all important tools, tactics, and drivers of social change during the civil rights movement, but they themselves aren’t examples of social change.

Examples of social change are the outcomes these activities and events brought about that reflected how people’s opinions changed or how social norms, policies, or laws changed after these activities and events occurred.

Social change isn’t the things we do to change the world: it’s the ways the world changes from our actions.

Social change can be intentional or emergent. Intentional change is planned change that involves specific interventions, activities, and strategies that are aimed at changing specific things. Emergent change is unintended change, which is often the consequence of intentional change but can also come about when different factors influence the status quo. Both intentional and emergent change can be positive or negative, depending on how and why it is brought about or what that change means for people and the planet.

Only one thing is sure; no society has ever remained the same: change is always happening. That’s why it’s so important that we consciously work to ensure those changes are positive.

Thinking about all the factors that influence social change can feel a bit daunting, which is why communicating what social change is, is such a valuable tool.

I think it’s virtually impossible for one person to have the power to drive social change on their own. Heck, Hitler might have been a powerful guy, but he still had an army of 13.6 million people doing his dirty work for him.

I don’t say this to make you feel insignificant, but to remind you that you’re not alone in your journey as a changemaker. You are a part of a large movement of people who are working in their own way to promote social change, and it’s our collective efforts that will have a sustainable and long-lasting impact.

I founded the Humanitarian Changemakers Network in 2019 with two goals in mind: Firstly, it was to teach young Aussies a framework for communicating what social change is and how they can take action.

Secondly, it was to keep young changemakers informed and educated about what’s happening in the world of social change and encourage them to take a more networked approach to social change.

I’ve been involved with a number of different actors working in the social change space over the years, who all work in different ways to bring about different results for different local and global challenges. But ultimately, all are working towards the same vision of a sustainable, just, peaceful, and prosperous future for all.

This taught me that social change lives beyond the work of any single organisation or actor within a social movement. Social change requires every individual, group, organisation, and leader within a movement to marshal all the necessary resources and create a joined vision for change and lead people towards that vision.

It can be really tempting to see others as your competition when you’re competing for the same scarce resources needed to make an impact. Just imagine, though, if changemakers worked together to build stronger networks instead of putting effort into just building and strengthening their own organisations. If this was the goal, social movements could be much more effective at creating long-term social change.

This is what taking a networked approach to social change is all about.

Social movements are complex networks of different actors working on different challenges, often with different goals and different levels of influence, so the world of social change can be uncertain.

Sometimes, movements bring about social change through small interactions and relationships that transform societies and social institutions over a long period of time. Sometimes changes happen so fast we barely have time to recognise what is happening and respond before the change occurs. Sometimes we can control these changes, and sometimes we can’t.

In my work with the Humanitarian Changemakers Network, we teach a simple framework for social change (adapted from the 2015 sociology study Gender At Work by Rao, Sandler, Kelleher, and Miller), which is designed to help young people like you understand, prepare for, and strategise your work to bring about social change.

Social change can be distinguished by two main factors: whether it targets individuals/collective society or our social systems and whether the changes are informal or formal.

Individual/collective change is changes that affect the people within a society, as either individuals or, you guessed it— a collective community. These changes will either affect people or directly affect the resources people have access to. Systemic change is changes to the institutions that make up a social system and the structures and processes within or across those institutions. These changes shape how social institutions and groups function as a whole.

Formal changes are changes that are very tangible, quantifiable, or well documented, which means they’re very easy to measure. Informal changes are those that can’t be easily measured or documented and might be more subjective, which can make them harder to identify and analyse.

Based on these two factors, we can categorise different types of social change by illustrating it as a quadrant, which gives us four types of social change.

These four categories all influence one another, and while change can happen at any of these levels for a particular local or global challenge, for change to be sustainable, meaningful, and lasting, social movements should ultimately seek to promote change in all four of these ways.

You can see that the top two quarters of the quadrant are individual/collective changes, and the bottom two quarters are systemic. The two left quarters of the quadrant are informal changes, and the two right quadrants are formal.

Informal individual/collective changes are located in the top left quadrant of the image above. These changes affect individuals and communities in ways that are not easily measured. This might include things like a change in people’s knowledge of and commitment to different issues, which ultimately influences social norms.

In the top-right quadrant are formal, individual/collective changes. These affect individuals and communities and are more easily measured and quantifiable than their more informal counterparts. This is all about ensuring we build the right environment for change to happen by increasing and improving the access people have to resources (such as services, support, information, money, or organising) that allow individuals and communities to flourish and live a good life.

In the bottom right quadrant are formal, systemic changes that are very visible and measurable from actors that make up our social systems, like governments and corporations. These include changes in policy and legislation that dictate how “business as usual” is conducted in our society.

Finally, in the bottom left quadrant are informal systemic changes to our social institutions that aren’t as easily quantifiable. Social institutions (such as healthcare, education, justice) can improve the realities for people at large through their ability to shape cultural norms, exclusionary practices, and living conditions.

Each type of social change is equally important because each type of change needs to be achieved to ensure complete, sustainable change is brought about for each issue we are tackling.

The four main parts of this book dive deeply into different ways you can work to promote each of these types of social change.

Understanding these different types of social change is crucial for all changemakers, so whether you’re just starting out or if you’ve got some experience under your belt, the following chapters will outline the methods you can use as a changemaker to promote each type of social change.

And while it’s important for people to work to promote both informal and formal, individual/collective and systemic social change for different issues, you, as an individual, don’t need to work in all four of these areas.

In your work as a changemaker, it’s okay to take time to hone in on or grow a specialised skill set and focus on making a change in issues you’re most passionate about, in the way you are most effective.

An important part of being a changemaker is keeping informed about local and global issues and continually growing, learning and getting better at what you do.

While there is an endless number of skills you could develop, the knowledge you could acquire, and experience to be gained, when it comes down to it, I think there are only two traits you must really have to be a changemaker.

Firstly, you need passion: some kind of moral compulsion or commitment to a cause that drives you to genuinely care about it and desire change. Since you are reading this book, I’d say you’re all good there.

Secondly, you need to take action and work to bring about change on an issue. This work can be big or small, done alone or in a group, and be paid or unpaid. There is no right or wrong way to work as a changemaker, but what distinguishes a changemaker from someone who is merely concerned about a cause is that they are actively working to change things.

Throughout this handbook, I’ll use the word work to describe the actions you take as a changemaker.

Consider this definition of the term work; “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result.” With this definition, it’s clear that what changemakers do is work, even if it’s not in the conventional, capitalist “trading time or skills for money” kind of work.

Something that helped me personally in my change-making journey was exploring the language we use to describe types of work. Elizabeth Gilbert (the writer best known for Eat Pray Love) makes a great distinction between the different ways we work, and it helped me make sense of my own work as a changemaker and engage in it with more clarity.

Gilbert distinguishes between four different types of work that we engage in throughout our lives.

The first type of work is a hobby. Hobbies are activities we do for fun that we don’t have to be good at, and we don’t have to get paid for. It’s something you do because you want to do it, and you enjoy it.

A job is a type of work that is transactional in nature. You trade your time, energy, labour, creativity, etc., for money. The purpose of a job is that it is a means to an end, like paying for your living expenses. You may really enjoy your job or may not necessarily like your job.

A career is something you are probably more passionate about and interested in. A career typically encompasses a series of jobs in a certain field over a longer period of time. A career might also involve some sort of specialised training or study. Not everyone has a career; some people will choose to work a job or series of unrelated jobs over their lifetime instead.

Finally, there is a vocation. A vocation, as Elizabeth defines it, is your calling. Your calling is not necessarily related to your job or even your career, although, for many people, it is. For others they might choose to live out their vocation through a series of passion projects. What makes a vocation different is that it is not given to you, so it cannot be taken away from you. A job can be taken away from you. A career can be taken from you. A vocation cannot. No matter where you go or what you do, it will always be your calling.

The work you do as changemakers can fall into any of these categories. It doesn’t matter how you work to change the world. The work of a changemaker done as a hobby is no less valuable than that of a changemaker whose work is their career. And getting paid for work in your career doesn’t make it any less genuine than if it was unpaid work as part of your vocation.

I started out in the world of social change when I was fifteen, and as a Junior Girl Guide leader, I began teaching young girls about global issues like poverty, hunger, global health, and environmental sustainability. At the time, this was just a hobby.

For most of my adult life, I’ve had a job that has nothing to do with my work as a changemaker. But I love it because it allowed me to move away from home when I turned eighteen, travel the world, and allowed me the freedom to focus on my career as a changemaker.

Building my career in the social change space involved my formal education, loads of internships and volunteering, and a heck of a lot of self-directed learning, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, I didn’t actually get paid for. It wasn’t until the final year of my undergraduate studies when I started freelancing on the side that I started getting paid for my work as a changemaker in my career.

And even then, I stopped freelancing in 2019 when I founded the Humanitarian Changemakers Network (HCN), which is an expression of my vocation to equip and empower other young people to change the world.

I say all this to illustrate that it doesn’t matter how you work as a changemaker. What matters is that you’re doing the work. Take pride in the work you do, and always be seeking new opportunities to improve and have a greater impact through your work.

As a changemaker, it’s important to work in a way that is best for you and that allows you to sustain a comfortable, fulfilling life. Think about what drives you to be a changemaker, the ways you have worked to create change in the past, and the ways you might work to drive change in the future.

The framework for social change that you’ve learnt in this chapter provides a good guide for what you need to work towards in your work as a changemaker, but that brings us to a more important question: how can you work to bring about different types of social change?