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A training and action learning programme strengthening the ecology of social movements and enhancing capacity for transversal and transnational organising
This year-long+ programme aims to respond to the key challenges movements and organisations are facing in Europe, from fragmentation, persistent divisions within and between movements, and a lack of movement capacity for longer-term and coherent strategy. It aims to nurture the interconnected movements and responsive strategies needed to challenge the interlocking systems of oppression we face today.
Combining high quality training, an action learning framework, and cross organisational and movement networking, the programme will enable movements to find new and transformative ways of working across our differences, develop competencies for transversal and transnational organizing to connect across issues, communities, and socio-political cultures ā supporting the building of the kinds of impactful social movement alliances required to achieve the depth of structural transformation we need today.
The overall objectives of the programme are to:
– Bring together experienced trainers and organiser/activists to work on key movement building themes and issues using a well-crafted framework for ongoing action learning, coaching, and peer-to-peer inquiry
– Develop collective capacity for long-term strategic projects that can respond to crisis and change
– Build relationships within the learning space across organisations and movements, seeding new transversal and transnational initiatives
– Embed action-reflection learning within movement practices in a well-crafted framework of collaborative enquiry.
The training will be facilitated by an international team from the Ulex Project team, the European Community Organising Network, European Alternatives, and National University of Ireland Maynooth. Together these organisations are developing the Movement Learning Catalyst project.
The programme is more than a training. It is designed as a transversal movement building project – connecting different struggles and communities across issues, strategic approaches, and localities. The course places action-learning, deep ongoing reflection, and building solidarity-based relationships at its core.
Themes
– Transnational organizing and movement building across geographies, countries, cultures.
– Transversal organizing and movement building across different movement issues and organising traditions
– Social movements and social change: Understanding movement histories, case studies, political analysis, reflection and learning in movements
– Solidarity and alliance building between organisations and movements: Intersectional practices, anti-oppression, psycho-social resilience and sustainability
– Strategy in complex and changing contexts: Strategy and complexity, power analysis, strategic orientations to crisis.
Learning activities
This programme will be designed with you and tailored to your context and needs. It starts from the challenges your movement or organisation is facing related to transversal and/or transnational organising in a specific project or initiative. You will be able to select among multiple learning components and resources online and offline to support your learning needs.
These include:
The programme is for a group of 40-60 experienced activists, organisers, and trainers based in Europe who:
Applications are welcome from anyone fulfilling the broad criteria listed above. We very much welcome participants who have done previous trainings in this direction (transversal / transnational alliance building). We will select participants from diverse movements and contexts across Europe to share and learn from each other.
Participants will need to commit to engage in the following programme activities from December 2022 to December 2023:
Weāll operate the programme in the spirit of a Solidarity Economy and weāre committed to challenging economic marginalisation and exclusion. We want to enter into relationship with you as co-producers and collaborators in the joint project of movement building. There will be no charge for any elements of the programme. We will ask all participants or their sending organisations to consider making a financial contribution towards the running costs of the programme in the range of ā¬500/ā¬1500/ā¬4000. Where activities involve travel and other costs, if participants or organisations can cover these costs themselves, we ask that they do so. However, inability or unwillingness to make a contribution will not preclude anyone from participating. Where participants cannot cover costs, we will engage in fundraising, aiming to help create bursaries to help cover these costs.
The programme development is being led by the Ulex Project in close partnership with the European Community Organising Network, the National University of Ireland Maynooth, and European Alternatives. We will draw on the pool of trainers connected with these organisations to provide training elements, action learning facilitation, and accompaniment/mentorship.
A longer description of the programme can be found here.
In theĀ solidarity economy:Ā
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
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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