vision. learning. integration. transformation.
We do a disservice to our communities and campaigns when we don't intentionally create and sustain healthy group dynamics and facilitate with the values we are trying to cultivate. Movement Matters' Advanced Trainings strengthened my capacity, and their mentorship guided me in applying the skills that I now use on a daily basis to ground my work in an approach that builds rooted, impactful organizing.
Vic Gonçalves,
Advanced Trainings & Technical Assistance Alumni.
Advanced Trainings & Technical Assistance Alumni.
Advanced Training Series
Our Advanced Trainings engage seasoned organizers, community leaders, community workers, and advocates. Anchored in Movement Matters' organizing framework (relationship building, constituency building, and power building), these learning and planning sessions move beyond fundamentals to provide an instructive and challenging space that deepens each participant’s vision, skills, and capacity. Each advanced training also provides dedicated opportunities for integration and alignment to participants’ current programmatic goals and/or campaign strategies.
Movement Matters is committed to the use of a values-based approach to organizing and movement building that is intersectional, anti-oppression, anti-colonial, and anti-racist. Our educational approach and capacity building framework are firmly based in popular education, cultural organizing, and other liberatory pedagogies with the ultimate goal of transforming not only the outcome of our work but also the process by which we do it.
We ask that each participant come prepared to re-examine and move past their own discomfort to fully participate in our liberatory, creative/arts-based, non-linear, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, transformational learning and action spaces.
Movement Matters is committed to the use of a values-based approach to organizing and movement building that is intersectional, anti-oppression, anti-colonial, and anti-racist. Our educational approach and capacity building framework are firmly based in popular education, cultural organizing, and other liberatory pedagogies with the ultimate goal of transforming not only the outcome of our work but also the process by which we do it.
We ask that each participant come prepared to re-examine and move past their own discomfort to fully participate in our liberatory, creative/arts-based, non-linear, multi-racial, multi-ethnic, transformational learning and action spaces.
*To the best of our abilities, we gladly work on a sliding scale with individuals/groups that need the support.
The Movement Matters Advanced Trainings gave me concrete ideas to build from, especially with more creative approaches to centering community members in our work. Being in a room full of people who also believe in our cause gave me further inspiration and bravery to take risks.
2018 Advanced Trainings Participant.
Facilitating Transformational Spaces & Experiences: Advanced Facilitation Training (AFT)©
Monday, March 18th - Wednesday, March 20th, 2024
10:00 AM - 5:30 PMIn person 3-day training in Washington, DC.
*Pre-AFT virtual Learning & Action Circle (LAC): Thursday, February 29th; 1:00 - 3:30 PM EST
*Post-AFT virtual Learning & Action Circle (LAC): Thursday, April 18th; 1:00 - 3:30 PM ESTBase-building is a crucial foundation of community organizing and one of the most challenging areas of growth currently faced by change groups. Shifting demographics and power structures have meant that a privileged, politically savvy population is advancing policies, practices, and priorities that devalue the experiences and contributions of low-income communities of color.
In the face of these dynamics, our communities and organizations are powerless without cohesive and well-developed member bases that share a rooted analysis and have built the trust and discipline to react and plan as a united group. Consistent gathering places that are well-designed, and the reflective and skilled facilitation of them, are irreplaceable steps in developing this type of constituency. However, these essential skills are often overlooked as expendable "soft" components of organizing.
Far from being a luxury, effective meetings and skilled facilitation are vital in building the sense of common identity and cohesion necessary to transform a group of individuals into a constituency that can envision change and take the necessary risks to attain it. These ensuing "relationships of action" drive movement-based organizing work.
In our Advanced Facilitation Training (AFT) you will learn and practice:- how to deepen your active facilitation, animation and listening skills while understanding your challenges and moving towards growth,
- how to develop and manage transformative group processes,
- how to develop impactful, multi-modal, graphic and arts-based agendas, and
- how to utilize meetings as a strategic tool for constituency/base building and power building from a popular education lens.
We center our Advanced Facilitation Training (AFT) in the constituency building context of our community organizing framework (relationship building, constituency building, and power building). The AFT connects the theoretical role that facilitation and meetings play as the “spine” of the organizing process with practical skills to create more dynamic meetings that sustain campaigns and other strategic actions.
Our training approach is grounded in somatics, expressive arts, story-sharing, and ritual practices that engage participants' bodies and minds so that they can more fully experience the training content. In addition, these approaches model ways to deeply ground community members in a lived experience of our collective values. We view these approaches as integral to allow us to embody the world we are trying to create within our organizing practice.Transforming Vision, Power, and Leadership:
Advanced Popular Education Training (APET)©*Post-APET virtual Learning & Action Circle (LAC): TBD
Popular education is transformational. It lies at the roots of values and visions that challenge the status quo of capitalism, racism, supremacy, and misogyny over peoples, non-humans, more-than-humans, and the earth. It sparked radical cultural and political change led by peoples in the southern hemisphere. In the US, it is rooted in the Black Southern Organizing Tradition and other movements for change (i.e. the Farmworkers’ Movement) that have shifted our understanding of what is possible.
Popular education is based on practices that span generations. It emerged as a foundation based on culture, ritual, practices and procedures used by peoples to care for and maintain their communities; to deepen their consciousness and skills. Popular education is ancestral knowledge. It is grounded in culture and living stories; in the ways that our communities are already communicating and connecting, sharing knowledge, and building resilience and resistance. Deep change, driven by a liberatory vision and rooted in the people, has always had popular education at its heart.Popular education decolonizes and re-creates our context and analysis to guide the external change we are creating in the world (lo de afuera). It also helps us create the internal values and ways of relating to each other to model the world we are trying to create (lo de adentro)—centering ancestral knowledge, culture, nature, and spirit. Throughout these internal and external processes, popular education recognizes the inherent understanding and capacity that each of us brings to the table, making a seat for everyone, and protecting what is built with vision and discipline.
Cultural organizing, facilitation/animation, group process, and collective healing in community are all integral parts of popular education. Creating the space for community members to center their individual and collective experiences, to share and deepen structural analysis about the problems they face, and to build a common identity around a shared vision is necessary for transformative organizing that builds beyond a short-term campaign. It is foundational to move issue-based organizing to long-term movement building. Popular education is even more critical in the current environment. Our Black, Native, Indigenous, Brown, immigrant, LGBTQ+, low-income, and working class communities face significant changes in their material conditions as a result of the COVID crisis. Without a process to critically reflect on these experiences, many community members will only engage to meet their most immediate needs; our ability to stake out a visionary claim on the future and to build lasting relationships to achieve it will be lost. Popular education offers a way to build this type of long-term vision into our organizing work, even in the midst of a crisis.
Movement Matters' Advanced Popular Education Training (APET) helps participants develop the theoretical understanding and concrete skills to incorporate popular education as a foundational aspect of their community organizing practice.
This online training combines live virtual training sessions, live Q&A sessions, individual homework and one-on-one accompaniment to allow participants to both learn advanced skills, integrate them, and put them immediately into practice.
No Base, No Leaders, No Change:
Advanced Member Development Training©2024 Dates TBD
Course description and final 2024 training dates coming soon!
Connect with us if you have any questions.Our Stories, Our Meaning:
Advanced Communications Training©2024 Dates TBD
Course description and final 2024 training dates coming soon!
Connect with us if you have any questions.
Applying What We Learn: MM Learning and Action Circles
We heard clearly from our alumni that there is a strong need for anti-oppression spaces for organizers, popular educators, and community leaders to continue building our skills and apply what we learn on an ongoing basis.
In response, we launched Movement Matters' Learning and Action Circles (LACs). We envision these spaces as a shared workshop where each participant can bring their ongoing projects and have the opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas with peers, access resources, get support in planning and implementation, and deepen their own skills. These LACs are also aligned to continue the learning from our Community Organizing & Popular Education Institute and our Advanced Training Series.
In response, we launched Movement Matters' Learning and Action Circles (LACs). We envision these spaces as a shared workshop where each participant can bring their ongoing projects and have the opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas with peers, access resources, get support in planning and implementation, and deepen their own skills. These LACs are also aligned to continue the learning from our Community Organizing & Popular Education Institute and our Advanced Training Series.
To request information about MM's Advanced Trainings, or to request an Advanced Training in your area, connect with us.
Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.
We work regionally with various communities and with national partners.
