Linda Stout is an inspiring and powerful public speaker and story-teller. By speaking from the heart, she draws on her own life experiences growing up in poverty and 40-plus years of social activist work to present compelling and entertaining presentations to all types of audiences. She speaks on a variety of topics and tailors her speeches to the audience and subject. Linda empowers, entertains and moves her audience to positive action through her unique and transformative work.
Cultural Shift For Progressive Change – What shifts are needed to build inclusive, powerful and diverse organizations and communities? This presentation explores how we, as activists and organizations, need to change the way we work in order to build winning organizations and communities.
Classism – Exploring barriers of class in order to create strong, diverse and powerful organizations. This presentation includes looking at culture, language and education as well as the long-term implications of internalized oppression. Suitable for audiences from all class backgrounds.
Collective Visioning – Transforming the future. Linda speaks about why visioning is a critical part of social change and why lasting change cannot happen without it. Visioning helps us to build a strong and powerful focus for change and also helps overcome barriers and divisions that keep us from being as successful as we have the potential to be.
Working With Poor People (multi-racial, white, immigrants) – Finding our voices! Drawing from her personal experiences of growing up in poverty and decades of working with low-income and working-class people, Linda speaks to the invisible walls that keep poor people from fully participating in civic engagement and from their own self-interest. This presentation can be tailored for middle-class and wealthy audiences, as well as low-income folks.
Poverty – The destructive power it holds for everyone. How poverty determines people’s lives and actions that affect all of us. Linda discusses how internalized oppression keeps poor people from being able to act and speak for themselves, how it leads to breakdown in our communities and organizations, and how to address it in order to create a more just and equitable world.
Intergenerational Organizing and Youth Empowerment – Empowering youth through visioning and how it can change their lives. Experience and research has shown that students who hold a vision for their future are much more likely to graduate and pursue higher education. We can work together across generations as organizers, activists and leaders, drawing on the energy and wisdom among us.
Self-Care: Avoiding Volunteer Burnout – Linda has been working for social justice for more than 40 years as a disabled person and has learned that in addition to her own self-care, she also has to promote staff and volunteers to practice self-care in order to be the most productive and powerful leaders in their work. She shows how to create a way of working for change that requires body, heart and spirit but also allows a balanced and healthy life.
TAKE 10 Civic Engagement Organizing – This model is an internationally acclaimed training program for non-partisan organizations, leaders, staff and volunteers. It focuses on issue-based organizing and how to keep volunteers engaged for the long-haul. Linda speaks to simple concepts that help develop your skills to build vision, power and a base of informed, low- and middle-income, multi-racial activists that will impact generation after generation of organizing.
