ECON is helping community organizers and organizations develop their strategic practice.
Mentorship and trainings
Learning the craft of organizing can take many forms, but it almost always involves a combination of theoretical learning and hands-on practice.
ECON takes an open, experimental approach to learning the craft of organizing. We create training and mentorship opportunities for both new and experienced organizers, and support peer-to-peer learning, mentorship, and exchange.
Ultimately, the goal is not to mimic forms community organizing that were developed in different times, places, and conditions. Rather we seek to create a culture of learning and rigor that allows organizers in the field to adapt and evolve the practice of community organizing within the European context.
Citizen Participation University
Launched in 2009, the Citizen Participation University served as an early laboratory for the development of community organizing in Europe. But the CPU is also a space where the work of community organizers intersects with a broader array of movement leaders and activists.
ECON plays a key convening role in this event which takes place each year at a training facility in rural Hungary. The week-long gathering regularly brings together over 70 civil society actors from more than a dozen countries.
The CPU is a space where Moldovan street protesters connect with Belgian community development workers, where Croation and Spanish municipalists cross pollinate with Polish and Hungarian political activists. It is where big-picture digital campaigners hatch plans with community organizers working in local neighborhoods.
The CPU has a documented track record of nurturing and amplifying civil society forces, especially in Central and Eastern Europe. As an event infused with art and joy, the CPU is a critical piece of movement building infrastructure–in a region of Europe with far too few institutions of this sort.
ECON Member Assembly
Each year the members of ECON gather for a combination of exchange, training, and organizational decision-making.
As a gathering of organizers, for organizers, the Assembly is a space where ECON members can dig deep into the specific questions that shape or craft, and to develop the capacities of our network to achieve ever-more ambitious goals.
Past assemblies have featured trainings on scaling-up our organizing, fundraising, political action, and incorporating anti-racist practice into our work. We have also used the time together to sharpen our network’s strategic focus, and to develop the outlines of a fundraising strategy to support the European community organizing sector.
The Donor Forum is a convening space for dialogue and relationship building between donors and organizers on the challenges and opportunities that exist to make more and better resources available to the community organizing movement in Europe. It is a space to share experiences and lessons learned of organizing and funding organizing, to understand community organizing and its role in developing the desire and skills of local communities to lead struggles for systemic change. It is a space to have frank and strategic conversations on the needs, challenges, and opportunities of organizing to scale up and broaden movements for social and environmental justice in Europe.
Donor forums usually spark new ideas, initiatives and possible areas for further collaboration. One of the Donor forums in the spring of 2019 inspired the development and released a study by ECON together with its partner the Ariadne Network of human rights funders titled Making a Way Forward: Community Organizing and the Future of Democracy in Europe. The study interviewed funders already working in the community organizing space, shared case studies of the impact community organizing can have, and made a set of concrete recommendations aimed at supporting a more robust community organizing sector in Europe.
