Rebuilding Feminist Movements Initiative

JASS' approach to movement-building is a multilayered education and action strategy that includes political education training, intergenerational leadership development, popular education and communication, bridge-building across agendas and borders, and participatory research initiatives that are linked to concrete social justice efforts. With the aim of generating new knowledge from practice, JASS applies analytical tools, shares perspectives, and draws on individual creativity. This strategy is carried out in collaboration with diverse media and communications initiatives and through broadening alliances with other regionally-based women's communication initiatives.

JASS uses a structured process for reflecting on, documenting and communicating insights within and across the regional efforts to maximise learning and impact of the movement-building initiative. JASS also documents and shares movement-building stories, steps, and analysis through newsletters, radio and podcasts, YouTube videos, digital stories, songs, and an interactive website that features tools, frameworks, analyses, and materials designed for a broad range of activists, educators, researchers, and donors worldwide.

Specifically, JASS-sponsored movement-building institutes launch long-term initiatives in each region. Women from different generations, ethnicities, backgrounds, countries, and movements: analyse their context; map their personal and collective histories; identify challenges, opportunities, needs, and priorities; and generate a 4-year plan to build political capacity and alliances for implementing feminist agendas. In keeping with the core objective of strengthening participants' political analysis skills, most of the analysis begins with a participatory process drawing on participants' knowledge and assumptions about power from the most personal level to the public realm. This approach is informed by the assumption that women learn, think, and act through the lens of their lived personal experience; thus, women's lived realities, hopes, and dreams are considered central to new knowledge, new consciousness, and new forms of action. To bridge theory and practice, the process draws upon researchers and scholars to complement and challenge the collective analysis and sharpen understanding as the basis for visioning, agendas, and strategic choices. As the plan unfolds, activists and their organisations take increasing ownership of the process. Regionally based teams draw on JASS' range of publications and tools, web of local-to-global alliances and partnerships, and the opportunities for connection created by linking face-to-face organising with evolving information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Here are 3 examples of this strategy in action (for further details, see the JASS website):

1. The first regional institute gathered diverse urban and rural leaders in Panama in 2006, including indigenous women and trade unionists from social movements. They produced an analysis of the impact of economic restructuring and political conflict on women, society, and governments. Inspired by the metaphor of the petate (woven mat), participants wove together a 3-pronged strategy: 1) Observatorios de la Transgresión Feminista (Feminist TransformatWatch/Women Crossing the Line) spotlight and reinforce women's local actions by mobilising regional and global solidarity and media attention at pivotal events; 2) Sea Change Leadership Schools build on longtime feminist and gender training in the region, interweaving personal reflection and feminist ethics with human rights, advocacy, and organising; 3) Petatera Radio and Communications Strategy, created in collaboration with Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE), produces radio for web and broadcast, along with a newsletter (Boletín La Petatera), an interactive website, and multi-media documentation of "women crossing the line".
2. Primarily young and HIV-positive activists from 9 countries met to define an action plan for movement-building in Johannesburg, South Africa, in November 2007. JASS is responding to this momentum with sustained activist leadership training in organising, negotiations, communications, and alliance-building. In addition, JASS works closely with a team of political facilitators-in-training who will help to meet regional demand for JASS movement-building tools and strategies. At the International AIDS Conference in August 2008, JASS-Southern Africa delegates shared strategies with their Mesoamerican colleagues. The first of a series of national workshops to strengthen political organising strategies for better healthcare and livelihoods takes place in Malawi in November 2008 with the Coalition of Women Living with HIV/AIDS, among other grassroots organisations.
3. JASS-South East Asia (SEA) coordinators in Indonesia draw on their work linking massive grassroots organising with advocacy at local and national government levels in order to maximise the opportunities for working across languages, borders, and generations. In June 2007, an initial gathering of young women organisers from Indonesia and Timor-Leste took place in Jakarta, where participants broke the silence on taboo topics around sexuality and personal power, as well as wider social issues. This was followed up by an intergenerational feminist dialogue in Jakarta in August 2008. Meanwhile, a 7-country institute held in Northern Sumatra in June 2008 launched the regional process, as young women activists explored the faces of power in their personal and national experiences, and generated a feminist vision and agenda.

Women, Rights, Democracy and Governance, HIV/AIDS.

JASS programmes, such as the Rebuilding Feminist Movements Initiative, aim to: expand grassroots empowerment and public engagement; strengthen activists' and organisations' political and strategic capacities; build bridges and alliances across boundaries of power and privilege shaped by class, gender, race, age, location, sexuality, and other factors; and communicate fresh knowledge about the realities of social change.