Ben MacConnell

Ben MacConnell, the Recruitment Director for the DART Center, grew up in Bay Village, Ohio and graduated from Indiana University Northwest in Gary, Indiana in 1995. After college, Ben became a fulltime volunteer with the Brethren Volunteer Service, as part of the wider mission of the Church of the Brethren. While in volunteer service, he first worked temporarily at a café serving the homeless known as the Inspiration Café in Chicago, and then later spent two years with Hnuti DUHA, an environmental group in the Czech Republic. This experience inspired him to return to the United States and work on domestic environmental issues. In 1997, he was accepted into GreenCorps, an environmental advocacy training program based in Boston.

He appreciated the importance of environmental issues, but yearned to work with leaders, rather than push a specified set of issues. He also appreciated the power-based analysis he had heard from congregation-based community organizers. For these reasons, he went to work with DART’s affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky in 1999.

Ben explains, “Community organizing simply fits my values. There are lots of issues out there one could dedicate their lives to and I appreciated my friends for their passion around one or two specific things. But I have a passion for people coming together and calling for the justice they deserve. I also appreciate the opportunity to reflect and consider how God is at work through our efforts – that’s not a combination I have discovered elsewhere.”

In 2000, Ben was hired temporarily by DART to fill several fulltime vacant community organizing positions. These vacancies needed to be filled by experienced organizers. But dozens of people applied with the passion and potential to become good organizers – they simply lacked the experience. Also, it became apparent that no one was working to develop new community organizers in a formal way. The DART Center decided to rise to the occasion and launched the DART Organizers Institute, a formalized training program for people seeking to gain training and skills to become congregation-based community organizers.

Since 2001, Ben has worked with the DART Center to coordinate four successful Organizer Institute training sessions. This last year, he coordinated a national recruitment drive that surfaced 539 applicants, 147 final candidates, culminating in the training of 20 new potential organizers. He has also worked to consistently evaluate the Organizers Institute to ensure new organizers get the on-going training and development needed to be successful.

“Our communities are facing injustice at every turn and there’s no shortage of folks expressing their anger over it. But there’s a dearth of people with the skills to organize them. The DART Organizers Institute prepares those with the essential commitment to fill the gap.”