- [Nicole] Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Know Your Enemy online course. My name is Nicole. I'm going to be taking you through the course. I've worked with Corporate Watch since 2017 for my sins. And yeah, we're really hoping that this course will be a good chance to share some of the skills and knowledge in our collective more widely and to support you to take more action effectively. 

So yeah, the course aims are to support people involved in grassroots groups, campaigns, struggles, movements, to learn useful research skills that can help them be more effective in confronting corporate power and kind of more broadly like confronting capitalism. And to give you the practical skills needed to know your enemy. I really hope that you find this course super practical. That's how it's been designed, want you to know all the websites, all the tips and tricks to research more effectively. So in this little introduction video, now, I'm just going to talk a little bit about Corporate Watch, why we've started this course, a bit about the kind of learning aims and what you can expect as well as support available. And finally, I'm going to show you how to make the most out of the course and show you how the course works, practically, using the online system. 

So about Corporate Watch, many of you may be familiar with us already. Hopefully we've met in-person. But yeah, Corporate Watch is a not-for-profit co-op where work is co-op providing critical information on the social and environmental impacts of corporations and capitalism. So since 1996, Corporate Watch started. And since then our research, writing, analysis and training have supported people affected by corporations and those taking action for radical social change. So you can learn a bit more about us at this link here, corporatewatch/about. 

So why this course? I think like our intentions were that we want to decentralise research skills. You know, we get a lot of requests from different people, different groups, and we always do our best to meet people's needs and to help them out. But ultimately, we're four people working. All of us work part-time, like two, three days a week maximum. So we don't have that much capacity. So we really want other people to have these research skills. And that's quite politically important to us that education is like shared amongst people. We also believe that research is really important. So this is from our about page. But yeah, gaining an understanding of the role corporations play, the specific mechanisms of how they operate, and how they can be successfully targeted is crucial for everyday struggles against exploitation, as part of confronting and challenging corporate power and capitalism more broadly. So throughout the course, you'll see different examples from how research has been used in practise to be more effective, to win victories, to stop destructive projects, to gain pay rises, like all different sorts of outcomes. And we think knowledge is power and having information about what we've described as our enemies is really important. 

So yeah, some of the course aims and content, so to get clear and organised so not to feel overwhelmed anymore and to know what you need to research. And most importantly, how to be able to research securely. So having simple tactics and tools for online security. Learning how to use search engines effectively so that you can like prevent overwhelm and find the information you need as quickly as possible. We want you to learn how to build a kind of company profile. This is like a common format of a lot of our work that you'll see on our website, but we think it's really useful for other people to be able to learn how to map company ownership and understand the kind of hierarchies involved. Want you to find government contracts easily. Find directors, board members, and other key players. Find out who pulls the strings basically within a company or corporation and how to learn more about them. 

Teaching you how to find the shareholders and also to read company accounts. We've tried to keep this as simple as possible, so there's not going to be much jargon. It's just a half an hour video and you can kind of go through it again and again, and practise. But we've tried to make it so that you can find the information you need quickly and kind of ignore the padding and the jargon that companies fill their accounts with. We want you to learn how to connect the dots between lobbyists, companies, and politicians. So that's learning things like how to find donations to political parties and public members, things like that, elected members. Want to teach you how to write and submit a Freedom of Information request, which is a really useful research tool. We want you to learn how to map out company supply chains and get industry insight about risks and vulnerabilities. This is part of our kind of strategic research for campaign section. So here, we're going to be thinking a little bit outside the box about corporate vulnerabilities for campaigns. And then there's a lesson about undertaking offline research. So speaking to workers, physical surveillance, things like that. And finally, the conclusion just wraps it up and we share some top tips for writing up your research and sharing it with the world. 

So in terms of support, want to be really transparent here. Like I said, there's only four of us. We all work. Some of us work one day a week. Some of us work three days a week. I personally work two days a week. So responding to questions from learners could be a bit of a challenge for us. Though we've created a separate email address. So training@corporatewatch.org, and you can email us any questions that come up through the course to that. I'll do my absolute best to get back to you when I can in the hours that I'm working. But yeah, I apologise in advance that basically, we don't have the capacity to respond really quickly or promise any 24 hour responses. Like it's just not doable for our crew. However, hopefully, you'll watch the module about how to use Google effectively, so you can hopefully try and find answers yourself more easily. 

And also, I'm going to be talking about this more in the conclusion, but Corporate Watch offers bespoke support. So if you're working through the course and you think God I'd really like to do this with members of my campaign, I'd really like supporting map out the company together with someone more experienced, then please contact us. Like we do a lot of one-to-one kind of Zooms with union workers and organisers and people fighting eviction, stuff like that. And we'll go through things like company accounts together to kind of share those skills and build a profile of what's useful. And you might watch a lesson here and think actually, I really want to learn more about that. So please just contact us. The best email for those kinds of inquiries is contact@corporatewatch.org. And yeah, we'll do our best to support you. We can also help with specific research requests. So if you're struggling to find the information you need, or you simply don't have time to do it because something you're organising around is like urgent or high pressured, please contact us, like we also do a lot of research for different projects. So we can always add that to our kind of research pipeline and do our best for you. 

And yeah, the other resource that's really useful to have by your side during this course is the "Investigating Companies" handbook which is unfortunately run out pretty much of print copies, but I've uploaded a copy of the handbook in the materials section of the course, which I'll show you in a minute. So definitely download this before you get started and you'll... It's just really useful. It kind of goes over things I talk about more in depth. All right, so check that out. How to make the most of the course. So my advice is to download the slides before watching the video. This is useful because I've included like all the links. So when you're watching the video, you can pause it and you can click on the link of the PDF that you've got and see the website that I'm talking about, see the resource I'm talking about and interact with it more. 

I really, really, really, really recommend building a company profile as you work through the course. So at the moment, there's like so many online options for learning. But to actually put that stuff into practise is what's going to get you the goods. You can kind of listen to a video and like consume that information, but ultimately it's only going to be by doing it that you're going to really cement those skills. So my advice is to pick a company before you start the course and then go back to that company every stage of the lesson, and like add more and more information to your profile. And we'll talk about that in the getting clear section of how to record that information and track what you're finding. The other things you can do is just like pausing the video and then clicking on the link and having like a look around, like having a play, try and gauge something's usefulness book mark it. But yeah, I think doing things. I mean, I'm a real doer. Like I'm all about the practical stuff. 

I really think just getting stuck in is going to be the best way that this stuff becomes like second nature. And finally, just like really picking a campaign or a project that you care about. Maybe I think a lot of people signing up to this course will already be involved in some kind of group. And so you've already got something to work with. Otherwise, you might volunteer to do some research for a project or some of the collective that you care about. I think research, it's not dry. Like it's fascinating, but it can be dry, let's be real. It's a lot of computer time, it's very kind of heady and intellectual. But if you really care about it, if you know that finding out that particular thing could stop a project, like stop a prison being built or stop a new factory farm or something, then I think that's what's going to keep you motivated. So follow your passion, choose a solid company as a way for you to practise your skills. And yeah, pause the videos, look at the links, have a play around, get a physical sense of things. 

So just some limitations on the course. It's mostly like a UK context unfortunately. However, like lots of the kind of tools and concepts like how to use Google effectively or computer security or mapping supply chains, like all of that is going to have like international relevance. And I want to emphasise this as like only an introduction to these various topics. Like we haven't gone into big detail on anything. We want to kind of give you like a wide breadth of skills. And again, like if you need to go into something in more depth and you're struggling, you can contact us and we can try and organise some bespoke support. And yeah, I've already said this about practise, just practise, practise, practise. Like, it's definitely not about just listening to the videos and zoning out. It's about watching the video, pausing it, looking at a website, getting involved. 

So obviously, like we've made this course free because we've got a small amount of grant funding and we want it to be accessible. However, grants don't last forever. And it's frustrating having a tiny team and being inundated with requests. So the more kind of grassroots support we get, the more work we can do in the world. So if during the course or after the course, you want to support us, the best thing you could do is become a friend of Corporate Watch, which you can choose what level of money you could donate each month. Or you can make a one-off donation. And yeah, we definitely understand if people don't have the spare cash to donate to projects. But if you could share our work widely, that would be amazing, plug the course on social media, share what we're doing, tell your friends. 

So how does the course work? I am going to show you now. So here's one I made earlier. So the best thing to do is to just go back. If you're ever kind of lost on the website, just click on online course at the top. And if you were logged in, you won't see all of this stuff. This is kind of the weird marketing stuff. But you will see this course content here. So I'm going to click on getting clear, which is the next lesson after this one. And what you've got is you've got your video. So this is like where the main content is. And for anyone that needs captions, you can click here, choose captions. They're just in English and then those captions will appear here. You can change the quality. So if you're like me and you have terrible internet, you can have a lower resolution one or you can go higher. You can make the video bigger so you can see the slides more easily. And yeah, you can also watch it direct on Vimeo, I think. And then this is the most useful thing that you'll need here, is this material tab. So here I've uploaded the slides. So if you click on that, you'll download the PDF of the slides in the video and you can also download the transcript. And for certain lessons, I will put other materials here, might be a company accounts file or an annual report, but basically, yeah, they're always going to be here in this material section. And then once you've finished your lesson and obviously you've done all your practise and stuff, you can just click next topic and that will take you through to the next one and so forth. And you just keep going through like that. And eventually you'll kind of finished. So we've finished all of module one. And then you just click back to lesson. And so, yeah, that's the finish of that lesson. And then you can click next lesson. So this will take you to the kind of building a company profile module. 

And then towards the end of the course, we've got a feedback form. It's called a quiz, but it's not a quiz. Don't worry, you're not getting any horrible tests that you need to revise for anything. But that's just right at the end. And I just want to say that it's really useful to jump through one by one kind of in a linear way, because I'll reference previous lessons and things like that. But it's also totally fine to jump around. And what I've made is you'll see when you've clicked this video, like underneath this video, there's a cheat sheet. So you know if you want to look up something specific like, oh, I really need to know how to use companies house that will take you where you need to go. So that's the course. Good luck, get stuck in. If you ever need to contact us, you can drop us an email at contac@tcorporatewatch.org, or you can email training@corporatewatch.org. And also on the contact page here, we have our PGP key, which is like a privacy tool and an encrypted contact form. So if you don't want to send it like a normal email, you can use that. 

Anyway, thanks so much for joining us and I really hope you get something out of the course. Please give us some detailed feedback if it's not met your expectations or if you've enjoyed it, then that would be really useful. And again, don't hesitate to reach out. We'll do the best we can to support you. Thanks.