We have a diverse group of people and one thing we have in common is that we work with communities to develop their own solutions to the challenges they face and to collectively challenge injustice in its many forms and hold leaders accountable. A lot of this work is rooted in local contexts, diverse and focuses on long term impact.
Community Power is about communities most impacted by injustice acting together to have much greater influence, say and control on decisions that affect their lives. A lot of the knowledge on how to tackle injustices lies with communities. Harnessing this knowledge to build power needs resources, deepening of existing skills and cultivating of community leadership.
Community power is not a new concept. We have been doing this work evidenced by the successes we can all share. We do however need to come together as grassroots justice actors to learn from each other; about what works and what doesn’t, how to sustain the successes and build stronger evidence which shows that community power approaches are key in addressing the root causes of injustice and challenging the status quo. Power challenges Power.
This 5 week course will be an interactive discussion for GJN Africa members to share what works for them and what challenges they face on this theme. The course will be comprised of:
For 5 weeks we will go on a learning journey with grassroots justice actors from Africa and learn about the strategies that they use to build community power. By the end of the course, you will be able to:
This course is designed for community based paralegals, grassroots or frontline justice defenders and program staff who work closely together with paralegals and communities.
The course spans 5 weeks, starting on May 2nd, 2024 and ends on the 30th of May 2024. The sessions take place once a week, every Thursday. Each session lasts 90 minutes. You will have opportunities to interact with other participants through the live break out group discussions on Zoom and in respective WhatsApp groups.
Sessions will be from 1:30 – 3 PM WAT | 3:30 – 5 PM EAT | 2.30- 4 PM SAST
Interactive sessions, focused on theory and sharing of knowledge and experiences from participants.The course has five lessons:
The topics are as follows:
2nd May: What is Power? this session gives us the opportunity to identify and see power at the heart of each injustice we are fighting
9th May: Community Power: In this session we get to define Community Power together, see what it takes to build community power and identify what keep us from building power
16th May: Legal empowerment and community power: In this session we look at how we use legal empowerment to build and sustain community power
23rd May: Solutions: In this session we explore solutions to the challenges raised with inspiring examples from practitioners.
30th May: Key learnings and way forward :In this session we summarize what we have learnt and agree on the next steps