Movement Matters Team

Movement Matters (MM) has offered significant support and guidance to Muslims for Just Futures (MJF) as we continue to develop our power building model. The MM team has trained our members and staff on the nuts and bolts of organizing, base-building, and member development.

Given MM's decades of experience with community organizations, they have been a tremendous resource and support on organizational development and continue to provide advice as we figure out what a sustainable organization focused on strategic power-building can look like. Movement Matters plays a vital role in upholding organizations like ours.
Darakshan R.,
​Executive Director, Muslims for Just Futures.

About Marta

Marta V. B. (she-they) is a popular educator, cultural organizer, community artist, dance instructor, and somatic practitioner, as well as a principal and founder of Movement Matters. She brings extensive experience in working in multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual contexts with grassroots communities, and in accompanying the founding and development of organizations and programs with deep core values and strong administrative capacities.

Marta believes in movement building and in the necessity to develop sustaining networks and supports for visionary organizers and community leaders. To this end she creates unique cultural learning spaces for unpacking, cross-pollination, relationship building, skills building, and restoration. She has also been key in developing popularized/culturally competent organizing manuals, curriculum guides, and advocacy tool kits, including Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching—a project she originally imagined and developed with the accompaniment of cultural educator, James Counts Early, as well as former Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members and other modern Civil Rights Movement leaders and supporters such as historian Howard Zinn. 

Marta braids and holds generative, transformational spaces that expand vision, grow knowledge, and de-colonize voice and bodies. She is happiest when she is facilitating with neighborhood children, youth, and adults; learning, growing, and laughing together. An ethno-contemporary dancer and long-time sought after teacher, she uses movement, expressive arts and story sharing to sustain radical healing and joy so that we can continue to reclaim and strengthen our bodies, our voices, and deepen our innate connection to nature.
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Marta is also a birth and death doula, a curandera-healer, and works deeply with earth, seeds, plants and trees. She is fluent in Spanish and English and proficient in Brazilian Portuguese.

About David

David H. (he-him) is a principal and co-founder of Movement Matters. His 25+ years of experience in movement work has led to a deep understanding of racial and economic justice, strategic campaign building, transformative facilitation techniques, and the mechanics of popular education and movement-based community organizing. His joy comes from working with local, national, and international grassroots organizations and formations to develop effective base building and member engagement infrastructure, healthy organizational culture, and effective strategies for change.

Recognizing that deep change work requires a well-developed ecosystem, David has also built a solid skill set and body of work in coalition development and maintenance, philanthropic engagement for transformative work, and the integration of mutual aid and solidarity economy projects into organizing work.

MM deeply believes that movement organizing needs to be built from a base of popular education. David’s training work gives him the ability to work alongside the MM team to tap into his creativity, deep analysis, and skillful facilitation to create transformative experiences for staff and community members of partner organizations.

David received his Master’s Degrees in Social Work and Public Policy from the University of Michigan. He is fluent in spoken and written English and proficient in spoken and written Spanish. 

​Understanding that rest and recreation are an important part of being in the work for the long haul, David is also happy to strike up a conversation about comic books at a moment’s notice.

About Nawal

Dr. Nawal R. (she-her) is a peacebuilder, educator, and community organizer with a passion for conflict transformation and social justice. She co-founded By Peaceful Means, a nonprofit that trains local groups and equips Baltimore youth with tools for peace education and leadership. A skilled facilitator, Nawal has led trainings on racial justice, allyship, and community organizing for institutions like Open Society Foundations and Enterprise Community Development.

Her international experience includes working with Save the Children to develop a training manual for frontline staff working with youth in Lebanon and co-leading peace delegations focused on grassroots diplomacy efforts in Syria and the Palestinian territories. Nawal has offered trainings utilizing popular theatre methods to explore themes of justice with youth from conflict zones all over the world. She is a trained Theatre of the Oppressed facilitator and is passionate about using art to envision a more just and equitable world.

Currently, Nawal teaches Community Organizing at Georgetown University’s Justice and Peace Studies program, mentoring the next generation of changemakers. She received her Ph.D. at George Mason University's Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution.

About Delia

Delia B. N. (she-her) brings extensive experience in project development, administration and coordination, cultural organizing and popular education, community based story collection, archiving and research. Her work across artistic, educational and organizing spaces centers immigrant communities and voices.

​Delia has worked with local artists, filmmakers, and organizers in fundraising, coordinating production logistics, and digitizing historical archives to weave together complex community stories.

About Asha

Asha C. (she-her) is a facilitator, organizer, and environmental justice advocate. Her love of food and commitment to liberation were cultivated by her grandmother, a daughter of sharecroppers who was able to preserve and pass on her love of the land.

Asha began her career supporting youth led organizing for environmental justice in Boston and developing local policy in Atlanta, Georgia. During her time as the Food Justice Strategist at DC Greens, she organized with community leaders most impacted by food insecurity to build power to impact policy at the city level. Asha is the former Deputy Director of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance, and continues to support Black queer and trans land stewards to build community, resources, and power together with the Black Mycelium Project. She is also a regional Co-Chair of the Chesapeake Foodshed Network and sits on its Community Ownership, Empowerment & Prosperity (COEP) Action Team.

Asha has expertise in organizational development, relational organizing, and uncovering where liberatory systems analysis meets praxis.

About Amrita

Amrita W. (they-them) situates themself in the interstices between individual and collective liberation. This focus has led to projects as diverse as cultural campaigns promoting healthy relationships in LGBTQIA communities, collectivization of resources for hyper local grant making, building multiple cooperative businesses, working to support youth both inside and outside schools with their creative and political desires, and creating spaces and economic opportunities for survivors of sexual and domestic violence.

As an educator and economic alternatives builder, they are constantly honing their craft with an ever expanding repertoire of tools as well as networks of learning communities.

About David

David V. H. (he-him) ​is a nationally recognized teacher and leader in organizing for social change. He has been trained in many small and large group facilitation methods which serve him well as a nationally sought after speaker, facilitator, trainer, planner, thinker, and community organization builder.

Using a variety of community organizing techniques, David has taught the fundamentals of organizing to thousands of people. Teaching and practicing what he learnt as one of four principal trainers of the Midwest Academy from 1998-2012, David has been instrumental in winning many victories for individuals and the communities they serve.

David is the founder of the Community Building Story Project, a project designed to reintroduce storytelling into American culture as a tool to build community and heal the nation. He uses storytelling to create sacred space where the voices and visions of all that are gathered can be shared and heard. His presentations give insight to his belief that next to the universal laws of physics, absolutely nothing impacts the universal and collective human spirit and its mystical and magical journey, more than story.

He founded David H. & Associates in 1996 to serve as an institution dedicated to citizen empower and community development. Much of David's research, training and methodology were born during his three-year W.K. Kellogg Foundation National Leadership Fellowship.

About Juan Carlos

Juan Carlos V. (he-they-she) is a Latinx and LGBTQ+ advocate, librarian and community organizer looking to create change at the local level. His involvement with social and health justice issues began in 2001 when he transitioned into the non-profit world after over 10 years of working for Michigan State University Libraries and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. His work has always focused on Latinx, Puerto Rican/Chicanx, LGBTQ+, Black, Immigrant and other marginalized communities to address how the lack of information, data, resources, and supermarkets directly affect the health and social and economic parity for our communities.

His professional experiences include Director of the Puerto Rico Art Museum ​Research Center, and later, the Sila Calderon Foundation library where he integrated the libraries into programs and community centers. While at The Praxis Project he established the Information Resource Center, provided technical assistance to the RWJ-funded Policy Advocacy on Tobacco & Health (PATH) program grantees, and provided support in the development/dissemination of print and electronic content, including training curricula, case studies, and an online local policies database. While at the National Influenza Vaccination Disparities Partnership Network he engaged Latinx, Black, and immigrant community groups in influenza control and prevention.
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​Juan Carlos was an Advisory Committee Member for the CDC-funded National Latino Tobacco Control Network and Steering Committee Member for LGBT Healthlink: the Network for Health Equity where he engaged in the reduction of health disparities across the country. At Centerlink, he engaged LGBTQ+ grassroots initiatives and organizations in states like Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Oregon, Washington, DC, and Wyoming. Juan Carlos founded the Citizen's Alliance Pro LGBTTA Health to help reduce health disparities among LGBTQ+ communities in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, develop data collection standards, host educational events, and establish partnerships with universities, grassroots and youth-led groups, and national/regional organizations. As a sought-after 2020 US Census enumerator, he engaged and surveyed Dominican, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Jamaican, Black, and Salvadoran households in Philadelphia and DC.
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​Juan Carlos was a co-host at the Reality Disfunction Podcast and a board member Substance Abuse Librarians and Information Specialists (SALIS) International Association.
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Peter F.
Art Build and Space Creation

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