Strengthening and interconnecting transformative social movements
We hear a lot about fragmentation within our movements and about the need to make them more diverse, inclusive, and empowering. We know that there are deep challenges involved in overcoming forms of oppression, such as racism, patriarchy, classism or ableism, which can often be reproduced within our movements themselves. This training aims to help us explore these challenges and to develop practices and strategies to build diverse movements capable of embodying active solidarity,and mutual empowerment. This course is aimed at those who already have a basic knowledge and experience of working with power and privilege themes at a group level and who want to build on that to bring their practice up to the inter-organisational and movement level.
We often bring perspectives of power and the privilege we bear into our groups and organisational dynamics. We also need to think about them at a movement level and in building alliances and wider forms of collaboration. This training will create a reflective space in which we can explore the challenges this involves and begin to design and develop approaches for responding to them.
There are no ready-made recipes for practising solidarity and intersectional organising, therefore the training will be designed in a way that allows for deep reflection, identifying challenges and unhelpful organising patterns and will support participants in developing their capacity to respond to challenges and transform movement building cultures in ways that feel most empowering in the local context and with the communities involved. We want to collectively create a courageous space so that we can step out of our comfort zones and enable critical reflection on movement practices and cultures, starting on a personal level and moving to movement level.
We will explore how organising rooted in active and intentional solidarity can make our movements stronger and more resilient (rather than fragmented) and how we can practise intersectionality from a place of value alignment and vision for justice and joy rather than a fear of making mistakes, shame and blame.
The training assumes a basic literacy with power and privilege themes. We will cover a basic introduction to create common ground but we want to move beyond the basic level analysis and knowledge.
Key topics will include:
Main methods and approaches:
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone with experience in socially engaged action addressing ecological, political and social justice issues. We embrace a broad definition of activism, including: Resistance – action preventing further damage to ecosystems and social justice; Renewal – action focused on developing and creating alternatives for healthier societies and communities; and Building Resilience – action supporting increased resilience in communities to weather the uncertain times ahead. You will need a basic literacy with power and privilege themes to be able to participate in this course, as well as experience in movement participation. This course might not be suitable for those just starting their engagement with social movements.
The course will be delivered in accessible, international English.
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
Contact us
to apply
Location:
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.
new stories: different worlds
–
Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
–
Tools for effective and sustainable activism
–
Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
–
an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
–
Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
–
Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
–
a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
–
building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
–
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
