Johnny Chatterton

London, United Kingdom

Bringing out other people's superpowers

The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell

In a world full of injustice, campaigners play a critical role in bringing attention to key issues and advocating for change. Yet, when ordinary people from marginalized communities want to challenge those in power, they often face an impasse, battling additional barriers to participation. Learning how to successfully campaign on important issues takes work, community, and mentorship, and these opportunities are not widely accessible to marginalized communities. The result is a democracy gap which leaves more privileged citizens with more power to advocate for their perspectives.

Campaign Bootcamp trains, supports, and mentors leaders to build a network of changemakers and win campaigns.. Campaign Bootcamp designs its trainings for marginalized voices and first-time campaigners in order to create diverse, resilient, and supportive communities. Campaign Bootcamp’s programs are available to anyone, with priorities for women, people of color, low-income, and the LGBTQ community. Graduates of the organization’s programs have gone on to testify before Parliament, organize national demonstrations, and be elected to local government. Johnny and his team also have created a train the trainer program, so organizations can spread the model even further. Each year, they train over 300 people through their programs, enabling graduates of the program to raise their voices and close the democracy gap.

"Back in 2014, two of our graduates, Becca Bunce and Robyn Boosey, launched the award-winning IC Change campaign, calling on the UK government to ratify the Istanbul Convention on Violence Against Women. Despite the campaign being run entirely by volunteers, it was able to create a coalition of over 50 organisations, mobilise thousands of people and gain significant media attention, all of which resulted in the law changing, by an act of parliament, in 2017. They didn't stop there; their next step was to ensure that the UK government committed to extending extra-territorial jurisdiction to crimes such as rape, sexual assault and domestic abuse to prevent impunity for perpetrators of violence in the current Domestic Abuse Bill (2019)."