Resilient Organisations: CEE Programme

9 to 16 March 2024

Making our work together empowering, effective, and transformative.

 

This training will help organisations to put in place practices and structures that will support sustainable and effective collaboration. 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. All of this becomes harder when faced with additional pressures such as financial resourcing or political hostility. We’ll draw on Ulex Transformative Collaboration training and adapt the curriculum to address specific challenges faced by organisations in Central and Eastern Europe.

This training is part of the Ulex Central and Eastern Europe Programme pilot year. It is designed and delivered by a training team embedded in CEE social movements.


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. It’s 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.

But working in groups 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.

This training will help you to learn how to collaborate, communicate and make decisions effectively. It will help you to draw out the best in yourself and others, to stay in healthy relationship, build teams based on shared values – and get things done! We will look at challenges related to financial sustainability and meeting the ongoing resourcing needs of our groups. This course integrates practical skills and approaches to group and organisational development with reflective and group practices that explore the personal-interpersonal dimensions of organisational life.

This training is for activists and organisers based in CEE. It is part of Ulex CEE Programme pilot year.

Through a blend of participatory education and immersive learning you will learn how to:

  • Develop shared purpose and vision
  • Create a culture that reflects your shared values
  • Keep your approach responsive and relevant in an ever-changing world
  • Communicate more collaboratively and understand patterns that help us hold important conversations
  • Think strategically to turn vision into effective pathways for action
  • Work with power – transforming it, distributing it, and using it well
  • Manage conflict creatively
  • Create a structure where tasks and roles are clear and empowering
  • Learn effective decision making skills for a range of contexts, that support accountability, creativity and initiative
  • Sustain motivation and involvement
  • Understand the inner life of group dynamics and cycles
  • Explore issues related to financial sustainability and resourcing.

This course description will be refined by the training team early in 2024.

This training will take place in Kunbábony, Hungary
This venue is accessible for people with limited mobility.

Some travel bursaries will be available. There is no charge for the training, so economic difficulties should not prevent you attending!

 

Suggested Contribution
In the solidarity economy: €300/€500/€1200
(see the details of our approach to Solidarity Economics for details)

The Team

Our Name

Ulex: Latin (argelaga Catalan, gorse English) noun:

1. A thorny-evergreen flowering shrub, with a high capacity for regeneration and resilience. Its seedpods open in contact with fire and it reshoots from charred stumps. A successionary plant that grows well under challenging conditions. It improves soil fertility through nitrogen fixing, preparing the way for renewed biodiversity.

2. A traditional choice for igniting fires. Burns hot and bright.

3. A networked project adding nutrition and fertility to European social movements through training and capacity building. It kindles the realisation of social justice, ecological intelligence, and cognitive vitality.