Southern Vision Alliance believes that communities and workers should have the power to shape their conditions, and be part of decisions about the resources and infrastructure around them. That belief is at the heart of the NC Power Building Cohort, an 18-month partnership with Blueprint NC and 14 grassroots organizations rooted in Black, immigrant, Indigenous, rural, LGBTQ+, veteran, disability justice, and working-class communities across North Carolina.
Our Theory of Change starts with a simple proposition: when grassroots organizations become stronger and more connected, communities gain greater power to transform their neighborhoods, workplaces, and environments.
Building power requires more than organizational “capacity.”
Through the cohort, organizations assess their strengths and opportunities and develop comprehensive Power Building Plans. They strengthen their base-building practices, cultivate emerging leaders, sharpen campaign strategies, and receive flexible resources to put those strategies into action. SVA and Blueprint NC provide coaching, technical assistance, relationships, and other support to disrupt and transform power for collective liberation.
The cohort creates relationships and alignment through peer-support pods, issue-based Mini-Tables, in person convenings, and shared learning. Organizations working from Western NC to the coast are building relationships across issues, geographies, and generations. Members are finding opportunities for collaboration around civic and youth engagement, ending Anti-Blackness, organizing around climate, energy infrastructure, and environmental justice, supporting neurodivergent members, and other struggles that are often treated as separate.
We believe this approach works because power grows through practice.
When organizations recruit more people into collective activity, develop leaders, run campaigns, and win material improvements, communities begin to experience their own ability to create change. A successful campaign may improve housing, workplace safety, transportation access, environmental conditions, or disaster resilience—but it also leaves behind stronger leaders, deeper relationships, greater confidence, and more people prepared for the next fight.
Fourteen stronger organizations can become fourteen anchors of stronger local civic infrastructure. Relationships built across the cohort can become statewide networks. Local campaigns can produce lessons, leaders, and strategies that travel across North Carolina.
Our ultimate goal is bigger than an individual campaign or organization: thriving communities where people have the power to shape the conditions for health, dignity, joy, and justice.
That is the work of power building, and why we believe investing in organized communities today can transform North Carolina for generations.
To learn more about the Power Building Program, reach out at Power@Southernvision.org.
The SVA/Blueprint NC Power Building Cohort includes:
7 Directions of Service
ABC2
Black Workers for Justice
Common Defense
Durham Beyond Policing
It’s Our Future/El Futuro Es Nuestro
NAACP North Carolina State Conference
NC Disaster Response and Resilience Network (DRR)
People’s Power Labs
Reparations Stakeholder Authority of Asheville (RSAA)
Richmond County Coalition for Justice and Black Empowerment
Robeson County Cooperative for Sustainable Development
Symbodied
Tranzmission
Sept 9, 2026. Power Building cohort members in Wilmington, NC during a Power Mapping session to Stop the Construction of Data Centers in 11 communities across North Carolina
Credit: E. Everett
Sept 9, 2026. Power Building cohort Civic Engagement Mini Table meets to discussion fall 2026 Civic Engagement Plans at the Wilmington, NC Convergence
Credit: E. Everett.
Sept 9, 2026. The Votes are In – Cohort members vote on the shared campaigns they want to focus on during the Wilmington, NC Convergence.
Credit: E. Everett.
