Build. Grow. Lead.: free community organising training
Build. Grow. Lead. is our free six-month programme helping community organisers across the UK build groups that can act together and keep going. We're halfway through, and here's what organisers are learning, building and taking back to their groups.
There's a moment a lot of organisers will recognise: the first time you see what can happen when people who care about something find each other, organise and act together, and realise how much is possible. For me, that moment came back in 2012, when I was organising in Glasgow. It's where I learned the importance of not falling into despair, but falling into community. As I cared more about climate and nature and got more involved, my organising focused on building something that lasts, not just creating a moment.
So when the opportunity came to work with my colleague Jaz, an experienced organiser who's been instrumental in supporting Great Big Green Week organisers across the country, to turn our collective knowledge and experience into something other people could use to build groups that last in their own communities, I jumped at it.
What is Build. Grow. Lead.?
Build. Grow. Lead. is a free six-month organising programme running from July to December. We designed it around the practical work of building a group that can act together and keep going: finding your people, developing a shared purpose, sharing leadership, taking strategic action, growing your base and turning all of that into a plan for the year ahead.
Each month builds on the last. Participants don't just learn about one-to-ones, shared leadership or making a good organising ask: they try them. They map the actual people around them, have real conversations, make leadership asks, plan and debrief actions together, and practise bringing new people in. Between sessions, our monthly connection sessions give people somewhere to bring what's actually happening in their groups: the things that are working, the things that aren't, and the questions that only emerge when you try something for real. And for anyone who wants more support with their own group, one-to-one coaching is there too.
A lot of the programme comes from what Jaz and I have learned through our own organising, including the mistakes, experiments and moments that have changed how we think about bringing people together and keeping them together. But it's also designed around a belief we both share: organising shouldn't leave one brilliant, exhausted person doing everything. It should help more people find a role, take responsibility, develop their own leadership and experience what they can achieve together.
By December, participants will bring all of that together into a plan for 2027, with Great Big Green Week, when communities across the UK come together for good, as one important moment in a much longer organising cycle. Because the goal isn't simply to deliver a brilliant event or campaign and then start again from scratch. It's to build relationships, leadership and the confidence to act together that last.
And we're already seeing what that can look like.
Six questions organisers will be able to answer by December
Each month of the programme is built around one question every group has to answer for itself:
-
Who are my people? Finding the people around you who care, and learning how to reach them.
-
What are we here to do together? Agreeing a shared purpose and a focus that's specific and winnable.
-
How do we organise ourselves? Shaping the roles your group needs, so it doesn't all rest on one person.
-
How do we do something together? Planning, taking and learning from action as a group.
-
How do we grow? Using your new skills to bring people in, and keep them.
-
What's our plan for 2027? Pulling it all into a year-round plan that builds towards something, including Great Big Green Week.
Along the way, people leave with tools they can use the very next day: a map of the people and places in their community, a simple test for choosing an issue people care about broadly and deeply and can actually win, a picture of how the roles in their group fit together, and a growing network of organisers across the UK who are working through the same things.
Halfway there, and already taking it home
Three sessions in, organisers are already putting what they've learned to work in their own groups: mapping who's around them, agreeing what they want to achieve together, and sharing out the work so no one person carries it all. Two of them, Harry and Emile, have shared how it's going so far.
A new structure for an established group: Climate Action West Northamptonshire
Harry Mellor chairs Climate Action West Northamptonshire and has been with us since the very first session. Month by month, he's shared his reflections with us: the people he plans to connect with, the events coming up, and how the group's activity is starting to take shape.
For a group that's been going for five years, that's a big shift. As Harry puts it:
"For five years our group has jogged along, ticking boxes as the need arose: constitution, tick; bank account, tick; website, tick; exhibition stand, tick; regular meetings, tick. In short, things just happened. Build. Grow. Lead. is providing a valuable structure for a potentially more effective 2027 climate action programme." Harry Mellor
Climate Action West Norhamptonshire hosting a People’s Emergency Briefing. Image Credit: Climate Action West Northamptonshire
It's a reminder that the programme isn't only for brand-new groups. Plenty of established groups have the basics in place and are ready for the next step: moving from things just happening to a group that plans together, shares the work and knows where it's heading.
Growing fast and sharing the load: Room to Be, Dundee
Room to Be is a grassroots LGBTQIA+ group in Dundee, bringing people together through gardening, nature, creativity and social connection, and building allyship locally through partnerships and collaborative projects. Founded in March 2025, it has grown from an idea to more than 50 members in a year and a half.
"From just an idea, we have grown to over 50 members, showing how sorely needed this group is." Emile, Room to Be
Emile joined Build. Grow. Lead. from the third session, wanting to bring skills and prompts back to the group's small committee and steering group, and to be part of a wider UK network of people organising at neighbourhood level. Joining partway through hasn't held Emile back.
Participants at a Room to Be event; Image credit: Room to Be
"It has been useful to think carefully about the longevity and sustainability of Room to Be, in particular how to empower more members to step into facilitation roles and take on more responsibility, which will help us move away from our group being key person dependent." Emile, Room to Be
That's the heart of what this programme is for: a group that thrives because many people hold it, not one. Next year, Emile is planning a programme of workshops exploring how connecting with cultural heritage and queer identity can be a form of climate action, as part of Room to Be's Queering Climate framework.
Participants at a Room to Be event; Image credit: Room to Be
It's not too late to join us
Emile's story shows you don't need to have been here from the start. Build. Grow. Lead. is open to anyone who took part in Great Big Green Week 2026 or wants to organise for Great Big Green Week 2027. All we ask is that you commit to coming to the sessions and organising for 2027. Recordings of earlier sessions mean you can catch up in your own time.
Our next session is Session Four, "Do Something Together", on Tuesday 27 October, 6 to 7:30pm. We'll be joined by Kate Oldridge from Greener Henley, sharing what her group has learned about acting together.
Not ready to sign up yet?
See what communities got up to this summer in our Great Big Green Week 2026 stories, or find out more about Great Big Green Week.
Join our mailing list to find out more about our work, and how you can get involved.