Making our organising truly empowering and effective
In our work for social change it is crucial that we develop the capacity to embody our values between us, to develop skills for mutual empowerment and inclusion, to transform conflict and to empower our efforts of collaborative transformation.
This training is structured around core elements of our Transformative Collaboration training. Building on those key elements participants will choose strands and modules covering:
Weāll explore skills for truly embodying our values in the ways we work together ā and gaining understanding that can make our ways of organising truly empowering and effective.
TRANSFORMATIVE COLLABORATION STRAND
Drawing on our Transformative Collaboration Training, this strand will help you to collaborate, communicate and make decisions effectively. It will help you to draw out the best in yourself and others, stay in healthy relationship, build teams based on shared values ā and get things done!
Working with others is not always easy. It can feel frustrating, draining and unproductive. Meetings drag, personalities clash, power conflicts arise, chaos reigns and all this gets in the way of achieving what the group or organization set out to do at the beginning. But collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. Itās a basis for effectiveness, a crucial means of embodying our values, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we could barely imagine. Collaboration is not only a root of social transformation, it also provides a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to share and live out our deepest values.
In whatever way we envisage contributing to the wellbeing of our world, for most of us it is going to mean working with others. It is going to mean collaborating. Collaboration is key to collective agency and empowerment. Itās a basis for effectiveness, a crucial means of embodying our values, and it can bring forth emergent and creative qualities that alone we could barely imagine. And collaboration is not only a root of social transformation, it also provides a vital context for individual transformation, enabling us to share and live out our deepest values.
This core strand will use participatory and immersive learning you will learn how to:
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ANTI-OPPRESSION AND INTERSECTIONALITY MODULES
These aspects of the training will help you to learn the know-how of building more inclusive and empowering environments for activism and social change work. We will share tools and practices that aim into reducing discrimination based on race, gender, psychosexual orientation, economic status, disability, age, ethnicity or religion.
Systems of oppression often sustain themselves when we are unable to acknowledge and work well with the power dynamics, privileges and mechanisms of discrimination that exist in our groups, communities and societies. In anti-oppression training we carefully unravel those structures, gradually building a safe ground that can support us to explore these challenging themes step by step. Although the training content and process will address a wide range of discrimination and oppression structures, the main emphasis will be on how we can work with the dynamics that exist in smaller groups.
The learning process will be held by facilitators using exercises and activities supporting self-reflection and self-evaluation around the following topics:
Applying foundational knowledge, frameworks and concepts used in anti-oppression work, participants will be invited to explore ways to deal with discrimination and oppression at the individual, organizational and systemic levels. We will encourage participants to step out beyond shaming and blaming strategies, and to reflect on the personal capacities and boundaries that grow out of the unique experience of our own conditioning. The focus will be on identifying ways of empowering people with experience of oppression in order to be able to build more sustainable social movements, as well as reflecting on the links between anti-oppression approach and solidarity practices.
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CONFLICT TRANSFORMATION MODULES
Conflict in our groups is common. Itās natural. And itās inevitable. It can be painful and damaging, undermining our efforts and draining our energy. But it can also become a source of creativity, learning, and a basis for deepening trust and learning between us.
Learning to work well with conflict, developing the skills to find the transformative potential within them, and supporting everyone involved to learn and grow in the process can deeply empower our work for social change.
This strand will offer methods, frameworks for transforming conflict into opportunities for deeper understanding and learning. Weāll learn how to support the building of shared understanding, to hold such spaces more safely, and attend to the healing involved in handling conflict well.
MINDFULNESS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE STRAND
Mindfulness is about being fully present here and now, being in touch with what is going on inside us and around us. We can harness our attention and awareness to become more responsive and connected, and to engage courageously and effectively in the world. On this training you will learn to develop the empowering skills of mindfulness in service of values and action for social and ecological justice.
Drawing on our Mindfulness for Social Change training, this strand will share practices to train our minds and focus our attention, we build inner resources to become more balanced, energized and emotionally intelligent. In our fast-paced, stress laden, and complex world, Emotional awareness is crucial for being resilient in challenging times. It is central to mobilizing, engaging, communicating and influencing others, as well as thinking deeply, creatively and strategically. Harnessing mindfulness has never been more important in helping to bring about social change.
This strand will help participants to:
It is suitable for those who are new to mindfulness or new to exploring secular mindfulness approaches (such as mindfulness based stress reduction/cognitive therapy) and how it can support being an effective agent of social change within groups, communities, movements or organisations.
VENUE
This course will be hosted at La Solana, a venue close to the Ulex Project centre that we are using to host rescheduled courses that were impacted by the Covid pandemic. Venue details to follow.
In theĀ solidarity economy:Ā
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Sergio (all pronouns) was born in Romania and migrated to Germany in the early 2010s. In the past, he was a social worker with homeless people and a social consultant for Eastern European migrants for various organisations. Trained as a filmmaker, he spent two years making a documentary about the ācivic reawakeningā in Romania and the waves of protest it brought with it. In connection to this, Sergio is currently co-steering the development of an online open-source participative knowledge production platform on activism in Romania. Over the past nine years, Sergiu has offered his skills to various journalists, grassroots collectives and campaigns, mostly working within the labour rights, climate justice, international solidarity and anti-authoritarian movements in Germany and Romania. Nonetheless, his biggest focus since 2020 has been his work as an organiser with the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers Union, where he focuses mostly on organising Romanian migrant workers on construction sites, in factories and in the agricultural field.
new stories: different worlds
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Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
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Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have ā Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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Ulex: del LlatĆ, (argelaga en catalĆ ) nom:
1. Arbust espinós de fulla perenne i floració, amb gran capacitat de regeneració i resistĆØncia. Les seves pues s’obren en entrar en contacte amb el foc i torna a brollar dels tocones carbonitzats. Planta successional que creix bĆ© en condicions difĆcils. Millora la fertilitat del sòl mitjanƧant la fixació de nitrogen, preparant el terreny per a una renovada biodiversitat.
2. Una opció tradicional per a encendre focs. Crema amb intensitat i lluentor.
3. Un projecte en xarxa que aporta nutrició i fertilitat als moviments socials europeus a través de la formació