Building power from the margins to achieve large scale social transformation.
How do we use organising strategically in our activism and movement building? How do we develop a practice that moves from short term action to building long term strategies, from fragmented isolated strategies to ecosystemic approaches and alliance building? This training will help you address questions like these, exploring applications to your context, in a collective, participatory and diverse learning environment.
What is Organising?
“Community organising” is a term on more and more people’s lips these days. But what is it? And how can it be a part of strategies for large-scale social transformation?
Within social movements a crucial distinction has been made between mobilising and organising. Mobilising is focusing on engaging large numbers of people in quick actions. It relies on centralised decision making and allows people to self-select their level of involvement. In contrast, organising is aiming to cultivate relationships, agency and strategic autonomy, bringing people together to strategise, reflect, and grow, prioritising long-term capacity-building. Most effective groups combine both approaches and we will be reflecting on and exploring both in this training.
There are many different ways of thinking about organising within the ‘social change’ paradigm. Some of the conceptions we will be exploring are:
Community Organising: Aims to build power within communities, focusing on addressing local issues and injustices. It emphasises leadership development, relationship-building, and collective action.
Transformative Organising: A more expansive approach to organising that seeks not only to address immediate issues but also to transform underlying systems of power and oppression, and economic, political, and social structures that perpetuate the status quo and injustice. Early thinking on this practice has been defined by US-based organisers in “Demand Everything: Lessons from the Transformative Organising Model”. Applications to the European context and the learnings and adaptations of this approach to organising are illustrated in “The power of Organising: Stories from Community Organising Campaigns Across Europe”.
Movement Building: A broader approach that goes beyond specific campaigns or issues to build a sustained, interconnected ecosystem of organisations and networks working toward social transformation. Key aspects of Movement Building focus on developing shared visions and narratives, building alliances and networks between organisations, and creating responsive and agile structures that can adapt to changing contexts.
This training will be both rooted in theory, as well as offering a hands-on and very practical approach to how the skills of organising can be applied in the field. You don’t need to have had formal training in organising to get a lot out of this course. And if you are already an experienced organiser, this training is designed to help push your thinking about your practice further.
We will explore ideas and practices related to:
Theories of Change: How change happens in the world. Understanding systems and complexity as well as power and influence in today’s increasingly volatile and uncertain world. Exploring how individuals and organisations contribute to change.
Approaches to Organising: Looking at different traditions and practises from Community and Transformative Organising to Movement Building
Diversities of Strategy & Tactics: Combining organising and mobilising approaches in movement building processes, inclusive and intersectional practices as well as creative and regenerative methods.
The Role of the Organiser: Reflections on identity, positionality and aspects of inhabiting the ‘role’, as well as sharpening practical skills and tools.
Alliance building: Effective Organising (of whatever kind) is most successful when performed in resilient alliances. This course will explore the pathways to building strategic, meaningful, empowering relationships.
The aims of the training are:
Through a blend of participatory education and immersive learning you will:
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone involved 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.
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
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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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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 – 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 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