Training for Trainers to support activist-trainers to develop and deliver trainings on sustainable activism
This Training for Trainers aims to support activist-trainers who want to develop and deliver trainings on sustainable activism. The Sustaining Resistance project was established in 2009 and since then, through a series of courses, we’ve covered a lot of ground exploring the theme. Through this training, we hope to share the experience we have gained, provide useful tools and methods, and bring people together to discuss, share and develop ways of promoting sustainable and effective approaches to grassroots activism.
This will be the third Sustaining Resistance training for trainers. Previous iterations have inspired and supported work across Europe.
This training will support participants to develop the understanding and skills required to design and deliver sustainable activism trainings which:
We aim for participants to gain the confidence and skills to design and deliver high quality shorter workshops of up to two days, and to significantly increase their understanding of the issues and facilitation skills needed to run longer residential workshops. It is also our hope that the training will create an opportunity for the development of strong peer support networks and on-going relationships in the development of sustainable activism training.
We believe that sustainable activism training needs to address all three of the above aims. To support this we will be exploring and sharing a range of relevant methodologies, design principles, and specific tools. These include:
• creating frameworks for deep reflection, analysis, and the sharing of experience;
• the application of participatory and experiential learning to sustainable activism;
• methods of opening up and holding spaces for exploring the emotional dimensions of activist experience – including strong and difficult emotion;
• creating safer spaces to support deep personal learning and transformation;
• applying mindfulness-based and reflective approaches to self-awareness and increasing emotional resilience;
• tools which integrate embodied and somatic approaches to personal and group change;
• ways of integrating the sensing, thinking, and feeling dimensions within a learning process that addresses the whole person;
• tools and approaches to working with power, oppression and conflict within groups.
Who is the training for?
The course is aimed at activist-trainers with previous facilitation/training experience who are already developing, or want to develop, trainings for sustainable activism – and are interested in the approach developed within the Sustaining Resistance project. The training is focused towards those involved in direct action, grassroots campaigning and community empowerment, addressing ecological, political and social justice issues.
Ideally participants will have participated in a Sustaining Resistance training, or be able to demonstrate a similar level of personal engagement with the inner and inter-personal aspects of sustainable activism.
We are working on grant funding to support the course. If we are successful, we may be able to offer bursary-supported places. We do not allocate places according to how much you can contribute – however we do ask participants to do what they can to generate funding to help cover the costs of the course for both themselves and others – and contribute what they can. This is important work and we hope everyone will do what they can to make it economically viable.
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
Contact us
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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