ECON is helping community organizers and organizations develop their strategic practice.
Story of Change – School of Active Citizenship
Community organizing is an approach that empowers citizens to take collective action on the issues in their context. So far, most of the organizing know-how has been based on good practices from the US. In the past years, the European Community Organizing Network (ECON) has been supporting the development and documentation of organizing practices and experiences in Europe together with member organisations in Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Hungary that use organizing in their work with groups and communities. This project is an example of documenting and developing organizing practices in Europe.
PERIOD
2019-2022
PARTNERS
ECON, Common Thing Foundation/Poland, CKO/Slovakia, CeRe/Romania, Serbia on the Move/Serbia, CKA/Hungary.
TARGET GROUP
The direct target group was community organizers and organizers and volunteers from Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia, Romania. The indirect group consisted of disadvantaged communities supported on a daily basis by partner organizations.
KEY ACTIVITIES
Trainings
Through offline (in Hungary and Serbia) and online trainings, individuals supporting local groups and communities increased their competencies in topics such as engaging people in times of crisis, organizing centered around a chosen social theme, and the power of public narrative.
Publication
The publication “The Power of Community Organizing: Stories of Citizen Campaign Groups and Community Organizing in Europe” shows why organizing is an effective approach that leads to systemic change. In the study, partners share reflections from their work and examples of implemented civic campaigns. The publication is available in pdf format in Polish, English, Serbian, Romanian, Hungarian and Slovak
Download publication – ENGLISH | POLISH | HUNGARIAN | SLOVAK | ROMANIAN | SERBIAN
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Simulation
As part of the project, partners created an innovative simulation, “Let’s Organize! In Search of Social Justice” that presents community organizing in an attractive and accessible way. The tool provides an environment for safely testing different strategies and action patterns, making decisions, making mistakes and learning through experience. The simulation is used in workshops and activities with residents.
Download simulation
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Mobile Application
Another result developed as part of the partnership was the “CoAct – Community Organizing” app, which guides through the various steps of community organizing. Thanks to this tool, users will learn what this approach is and how they can solve important issues for their community, as well as learn about organizations with a similar profile. The application is free and you can download it from the Google Play store (various language versions are also available).
Download application
Thanks to the project
- The competencies of educators working particularly with disadvantaged groups and communities have been raised;
- Community organizers and volunteers obtained an innovative educational tool enabling them to present organizing in an attractive, understandable and accessible way;
- Partners shared their know-how on organizing and received inspiration for further work in this area.
More information about the project
E-mail: organizing.europe@gmail.com
Organizing in Crisis
PERIOD
2022-2024
PARTNERS
ECON, Common Thing Foundation/Poland, CKO/Slovakia, Community Organizers/UK, CeRe/Romania, Serbia on the Move/Serbia, CKA/Hungary.
TARGET GROUP
Community Organizers, adult educators, volunteers, and local leaders.
OBJECTIVES:
- Enhancing competences of adult educators to organizing disadvantaged communities in times of crisis
- Strengthening network and know-how of partners supporting vulnerable groups and communities through in person and digital community organizing
- Building partners capacity to take actions on national and transnational level in times of crisis.
Educational Curriculum on Organizing in Crisis
A modular curriculum to educate organisers, adult educators, volunteers, and local leaders on community organizing adaptable to a variety of contexts, needs of target groups. It will include modules with educational activities to develop digital and face to face organizing competences to respond in moments of crisis. It will build on the insight, expertise and experience of the partners involved and contribute build the capacity for transnational campaigns with community organising at the heart.
Online educational simulation
An online simulation game to educate participants on community organizing in an innovative and engaging way. It enables participants to share knowledge and experiences of organizing across contexts, practice strategizing and planning organizing in times of crisis in a simulation and observing long-term effects of organizing processes at local and national levels.
More information
E-mail: organizing.europe@gmail.com
Movement Learning Catalyst
PERIOD
2022-2024
PARTNERS
European Alternatives/France, Ulex Project/Spain, Maynooth University/Ireland
TARGET GROUP
Adult educators, community educators, and educators trainers, community organizers, and activists.
OBJECTIVES
- To generate knowledge and scalable resources enabling the acquisition of new competences amongst adult educators seeking to motivate and empower civil society and active citizens with skills and perspectives for transnational initiatives.
- To improve the quality and reach of relevant adult education through development of a competence and learning framework, innovative curriculum, and digital learning resources that address the learning needs among active citizens and civil society to better take action across diverse cultures and contexts, and to increase their capacity for transversal and intersectional community led initiatives.
- To innovate learning methods and frameworks that support active democratic citizenship, using peer-learning and communities of practice, and to share these innovations for sector wide impact.
KEY ACTIVITIES
- Research and report on transnational and transversal organizing
- Competence and learning framework
- Modular curriculum and trainer guide
- Digital and blended learning accelerator
- Year-long training programme – Peer2Peer action learning
Leaderful Organizing
The project on Leaderful Organizing (or ISELE – Innovating Social Entrepreneurial Leadership Education) aims to develop the conceptual frameworks, methods and programmes for more effective leadership training; to develop a competency framework, repository of best practices, a curriculum and training guide to support learning and skill development for ‘leaderful movements” as well as to promote community and active citizenship leadership which is shared, accountable, clear and easy to spread. This project developed the foundational resources for a Europe-wide Programme of Leaderful Organizing to develop the capacity of civil society organisations and movements to respond to a range of key social and ecological challenges.
PERIOD
2020-2023
PARTNERS:
ECON (Slovakia), Ulex Project (Spain/Catalunya), LABO (Belgium), Zelena Akcija (Croatia)
TARGET GROUP
Community organizers, activists, adult educators working within civil society organisations and and social movements.
KEY ACTIVITIES
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Research Challenges and Review of International Best Practice
Participatory Action Research to analyse the experience of organisers, educators and organisations on leadership, leaderful organizing and active citizenship to enhance our understanding of the key challenges and opportunities they encounter. We identified the current needs and gaps around the provision of leadership trainings, and wrote a research report with the concepts and practices of leadership and leaderfulness which has informed the development of a curriculum, competency frameworks, and sector wide interventions.
Link: Leadership and Leaderful organizing: Research on building leaderful movements in Europe
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Educators Toolkit on Leaderful Organizing
We harvested, evaluated and selected a toolkit including the most effective tools and content on Leaderful Organizing. We adapted the design of the tools, models and resources and curated them an online space on the Commons Library accessible to educators and community organisers.
Link: Toolkit on Leaderful Organizing
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Leaderful Organizing: Competency and Learning Framework
We developed a competence and learning framework to serve as a reference and conceptual framework for adult educators describing the key competences for leaderful organizing and the capabilities needed to put them into practice.
Link: Leaderful Organsing: Competency and Learning Framework
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Leaderful Organizing Curriculum
We developed a modular curriculum for educators and trainers to support them in designing training experiences to develop competencies for leaderful organizing. Each module includes example session plans and educational activities and it is designed to enable trainers to adapt the curriculum to a variety of settings suitable to the diverse contexts and needs of learners. The curriculum constitutes the foundation for training programmes on leaderful organizing.
Link: Leaderful Organizing Curriculum
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Training of Trainers Handbook
The Training of Trainers Handbook is aimed at increasing the competence of adult educators to provide trainings on leaderful organizing with diverse learners. It explores the concept of “leaderful pedagogy” as a set of training practices and tools for those who want to practice leaderful organizing. It includes how to work with diverse learners, how to design and deliver the training and learning activities. Available in Spanish, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Croatian, Catalan, and Dutch.
Link: Handbook – Towards a Leaderful Pedagogy (EN | HU | SK | PL | ES | NL| HR | CAT)
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Blended Learning Course Resources
We developed an online blended learning space with digital resources and tools to assess individual and organisational competencies for leaderful organizing and take a self-paced online learning journey based with different textual, audio and visual resources on leaderful organizing. This course offers innovative approaches that support flexible learning that could be complemented the in person elements of the curriculum and the handbook.
Link: Blended Learning Course on Leaderful Organizing
More information
E-mail: organizing.europe@gmail.com
Organizing Frontline Communities for a Just Transition
This project proposes to test innovative and transformative ways to engage and organize frontline communities affected by climate change and inequality lead their own transformation and participate in democratic processes for a Just transition. The rationale is that frontline communities that are the most affected by the impacts of climate change and systemic injustice are often not meaningfully engaged in the Climate Justice Movement and in discourses on what a transition to a sustainable society should look like. In particular, in Central and Eastern decision makers are often voting at EU level in opposition to European climate policies and will continue to do so without a strong demand for a just transition from their citizens. This calls for a need to work in these
countries to build bottom-up power of frontline communities to organize for a Just Transition locally and at European level. We will use community organizing as a strategy for bottom-up systemic change and power shift.
PERIOD
2023-2024
PARTNERS
ECON, CKO/Slovakia, RE-SET/Czech Republic, Common Thing Foundation/Poland.
TARGET GROUP
Frontline communities and groups, ECON member organisations, community organizers, climate justice movements, citizens, governments.
OBJECTIVES
- Increase the democratic participation of frontline communities affected by climate change and inequality and build the capacity of frontline groups to organize for a Just Transition.
- Empower frontline groups and movements working with affected communities to organize locally-rooted, internationally coordinated organizing campaigns for a Just Transition.
- Strengthen ECON’s network, capacity, and infrastructure to convene and coordinate frontline groups and members to learn from each other local campaigns and lead a transnational campaign.
KEY ACTIVITIES
1.Empower frontline groups in 3 CEE countries to organize for a Just Transition
Conduct community organizing process in frontline communities in Slovakia, Poland and Czech Republic, building relationships, supporting the development of their organizing and leadership capacity and facilitating collective analysis, and campaigning for common issues.
2.Develop capacity to organize for a Just Transition in Europe
Organizing curriculum and international training with climate justice organizers and frontline group leaders with local trainings in in Slovakia, Poland and Czech Republic.
3. Network building, learning exchange and transnational campaign for Just Transition.
Strengthening ECON’s network, capacity and infrastructure to coordinate and facilitate learning exchange across frontline groups, develop organizing capacity, alliance building, and transnational campaign strategy. Open spaces for frontline groups to meaningfully engage in the Climate Justice Movement in Europe and be heard at local, national and EU levels.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
- Frontline groups of about each in 3 countries formed and capacity built to lead organizing campaigns for a Just Transition. .
- Organizers and local leaders join the European Climate Justice Organizing team and engage in international meetings, organizing trainings, learning exchanges, strategic planning.
- Frontline groups leading a transnationally coordinated campaign for a Just Transition in Europe and connected through ECON’s expanded network with the Climate Justice Movement in Europe.
More information
E-mail: organizing.europe@gmail.com
