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Combining physical, psychosocial and digital elements of protection and care with security planning and management into an integrated approach
Activists, human rights defenders, and political organisers often get threatened by both State and non-State actors. This impacts our wellbeing and that of those around us, as well as our effectiveness, and, especially on the long run, it can deter and hinder efforts towards greater social justice and ecological integrity. This training aims to reframe security into community-care and self-care within our contexts, collectives and movements to face different forms of repression and violence.
This training combines physical, psychosocial and digital elements of security and care with security planning and management into an integrated approach. We will build on experiences and best-practices in the room and create a space to think critically and act to improve the security of activists, their communities, and beloved ones with the objective of “well-being in action”.
Combining work developed in the Holistic Security Manual with the resilience trainings developed by the Ulex team over the last decade, this week long immersive training shares an integrated and systematic approach to digital, physical, and psycho-social security for individuals, groups and organisations.
Creating Space: Security and Radical Well-being
This dimension will support participants to reclaim security as a subjective and personal or community concept. We will explore external risks and threats for activists in their context (e.g. with regards to law, violence, technology, and impact through gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, etc.). Looking at psychological responses to threats, we will build an understanding of the impact of stress and trauma on well-being, care and security. We will explore self-care, collective-care and well-being as political tools in political struggles, along with the importance of mobilising inner resources and solidarity while improving security in groups and organisations.
Explore, Strategize and Planning: Analysis and Planning for Security
This aspect of the training will enable participants to analyse and unpack threats, which are often multilayered and thus tend to overwhelm. We will analyse and prioritize risks, including situational monitoring, and explore ways to strategise for readiness, prevention, responses and resumption. Actor mapping help to identify allies and adversaries to consider for networking, advocacy and political action, and a reflection of different security strategies opens space for strategic planning. We will dive into realistic scenarios, prevention and emergency planning, and focus on the needs and topics of the group.
Act: Security and care in Action
This can range from action training or crisis response simulation, to investing in securing public and internal communication to actively build care and awareness structures within the movements, activist groups or organizations themselves. In our training, we offer space to acquire basic digital care skills as well as the option for peer coaching on specific scenarios or how to deal with conflicts within activist groups.
In the solidarity economy:
(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 ‘civic reawakening’ 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.
Location:
Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
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 – 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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exploring the deeper dynamics of collaboration, for transformation.
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strengthening and connecting transformative social movements.
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tools for effective and sustainable activism.
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Ulex: del latín, (tojo en castellano, argelaga en catalán) nombre.
1. Arbusto espinoso de hoja perenne y floración, con gran capacidad de regeneración y resistencia. Sus púas se abren al entrar en contacto con el fuego y vuelve a brotar de los tocones carbonizados. Planta sucesional que crece bien en condiciones difíciles. Mejora la fertilidad del suelo mediante la fijación de nitrógeno, preparando el terreno para una renovada biodiversidad.
2. Una opción tradicional para encender fuegos. Arde con intensidad y brillo.
3. Un proyecto en red que aporta nutrición y fertilidad a los movimientos sociales europeos a través de la formación
