Until victory, it’s a rehearsal!

Series of online workshops for progressive social movement organizers

With such tight deadlines to dismantle capitalism according to climate science, how can progressive movements organize for power? How can we make sure we move forward by learning from previous experiences and from each other?

In these online free sessions, we're aiming at sharing and exploring some basic tools for progressive grassroots social movement organizing and strategy that will hopefully help make your organizing more powerful and effective. These sessions are directed at people who are currently organizers (even if young or new organizers with little experience :) in their contexts, especially fellow young and student comrades, who want to learn how to make their work more effective as well as diversify their strategy and organizing toolbox.

Note that we don't think this is the "ultimate" or "complete" organizer toolbox trainings. We're just aiming at sharing a few learnings and tools we've found useful over the years.

About the workshops

• Four organizational layers - February 27th, 6PM (UTC +0)
  • This session is aimed at sharing some tools on one aspect that often creates confusion in organizations, movements and alliances: what are we, and what kind of agreements should we be able to reach?
   
• Action Learning Cycle + Failing Forward - March 20th, 6PM (UTC +0)
  • Often times, groups just jump from one action to the other without thinking strategically about it. How can we constantly learn from our mistakes, take risks, and "fail forward"?

• Theory of Change and Conflict Escalation - April 17th, 6PM (UTC +0)
  
  • How does change happen? There are various approaches to what we can do to achieve a certain change we want to see in the world or in society, and how to do it. There are also various approaches to why we think certain things work, and others don't. That's what we're going to explore in this session.

• Case study: How the "End Fossil: Occupy!" campaign was designed - May 15th, 6PM (UTC +0)
  
  • A practical case study on how FFF Lisbon designed and set up the "End Fossil: Occupy!" student civil desobedience campaign in 2022, what were the strategical questions that we were asking,  and which lessons can the student movement withdraw from this experience.
   

Link for the workshops: after you fill out this form, I'll send you an email with a confirmation and the links for sessions you've signed up for.

Additional practical information

• All workshops will be held online in the BigBlueButton platform
• The workshops are self-contained, meaning you don't have to attend all of them to understand them. You can choose the ones you're most interested in, or just come to one.
• All workshops are free :)
• All workshops will last around 2 hours.
• I'll try to do a mix of "theory" and of discussion and there will be interactive parts where participants can try to apply the tools to their contexts, but keep in mind there will be a fair part of "exposing" theory and powerpoint slides.

About the trainer

My name is Matilde and I've been organizing in the climate justice movement for 6 years now. I'm based in Lisbon (Portugal) and I've done organizing work at national level in grassroots collectives like Fridays for Future Lisbon and Climáximo, and at international campaigns like End Fossil: Occupy! or the Glasgow Agreement. I'm also part of Fermento, a trainer's collective based in Portugal.

About Fermento

Fermento is a training collective for social movements based in Lisbon, Portugal. We facilitate training and workshops in organization, strategy, communication and action, aimed at organizers and leaders of collectives, associations and civil society organizations. We are anti-capitalist, feminist and anti-racist. Our vision of activism is guided by the urgency for systemic change that the climate crisis dictates. You can check out our website here:  https://www.fermento-pt.org/.

Contact

For more information, please contact alvim@riseup.net.