Applications Now Open: 2026 Advanced Popular Education Training

Transforming Vision, Power & Leadership: Advanced Popular Education Training©

4-Session Virtual Training
Thursdays; January 29th, February 12th, 19th & 26th
11:00 AM - 5:30 PM (EST)
30 minute post-session Q&A: 5:30 - 6:30 PM (EST)
2 hour individual accompaniment/TA
​2.5 hour pre-training Learning & Action Circle (LAC): January 15
2.5 hour post-training Learning & Action Circle (LAC): March 26
For more information visit: Advanced Training Series

“Contrary to what I believed, my popular education practice was basically non-existent. I was only doing political education. I am really taking away the art of code and ritual development. Being fully intentional in framing individual needs and desires into collective values and collective action. And how to use codes at key moments in our organizing, particularly around the campaign development stage.”

​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 challenges us to decolonize and re-create our context and analysis to guide the external change we are creating in the world (lo de afuera). It also helps us to imagine and practice the internal values and ways of relating to each other, modeling 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 celebrates 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.
​

Too often, organizers confuse popular education with political education or art activism. "Top down" political education by organizers can be just as dehumanizing and oppressive as the lessons taught by our dominant institutions. Understanding the liberatory aspects of popular education practice is a necessary part of the organizers' toolkit.

In this Advanced Popular Education Training (APET), participants will learn how to:

• skillfully share knowledge, power and leadership,
• center community members as active co-developers in the learning,
• create and maintain rituals that build transparency, trust and growth,
• cultivate collective analysis through the development and implementation of popular education codes, and
• integrate popular education into strategy and campaign development.

​
​Movement Matters' Advanced Popular Education Training (APET) will help participants develop theoretical understanding and concrete skills to incorporate popular education as a foundational aspect of their community organizing practice.

This virtual training combines 26 training hours, 30 minute Q&A sessions, individual homework and application of activities, 2 hour individual accompaniment/TA, and a 2.5 hour pre-training and a 2.5 hour post-training Learning & Action Circle (LAC) to allow participants to both learn advanced skills, integrate them, and put them immediately into practice. Extensive manual, specialized materials box, digital resources, and an introduction to trauma-informed somatic and expressive arts practices are included. 

For more information or to apply visit:​ Advanced Training Series
Limit: 15 Participants.
*Applications close on Monday, December 15*

​
For more information on our Advanced Trainings or to bring an Advanced Training to your organization, connect with us.

Movement Matters is based in Washington, DC.
We work regionally and with national and international partners.