DataCenter is working together with grassroots groups, community based organizations, and allies to strengthen social justice movements. How are we doing this? By building each other’s capacity—sharing resources and knowledge, developing new tools, and creating space for collaboration.
Connecting with each other increases our ability to streamline our work, avoid duplication of efforts, and collaborate in support of shared agendas. We are part of an interrelated movement and believe that collaboration is essential to strengthening our work.
This past August, we successfully helped to convene two movement-strengthening collaborations:
1: With Grassroots Institute for Fundraising (GIFT), School of Unity & Liberation (SOUL), and Center for Media Justice, we hosted a discussion titled “Strengthening the Movement: Join the Conversation!” which featured an interactive, collaborative, real-time ‘mapping’ of the nation-wide landscape of today’s organizing infrastructure institutions.
2: “Tools for Power“—a day-long workshop for youth groups which took place in Los Angeles bringing together with Advancement Project, California Fund for Youth Organizing, Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA), and Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE).
“The Power Analysis workshop was amazing. The information was easily accessible and the methodology of explaining and teaching the purpose and how to execute was super helpful.”
-Youth Participant, 2012 Tools for Power Workshop
In this first joint training, the newly formed Resource Alliance for Social Justice (RealSJ), co-founded by the DataCenter, brought together its expertise about power-building tools such as Power Analysis, Participatory Research, Community-Engaged Mapping, and Digital Organizing. Together we developed a curriculum for 27 youth organizers.
On the ground, DataCenter puts research skills into the hands of community organizers and the constituencies they serve through in-depth trainings and high-level tools.
The next step is uniting the field of research intermediaries and capacity-builders to align the field towards the common goal of sustaining an impactful, relevant, and effective organizing infrastructure.
Join us in our efforts to cross borders, join sectors, and build stronger, more sustainable movements!