Social Transformation MENA-SPAIN Program: residential and online courses

A new program is being developed by the International organization Foundation for the Future, in cooperation with NOVACT, funded by Spanish Agency for International Cooperation, AECID to set up as a space to think about our movements and campaigns from the perspective of training. For this program, we have combined the principles and methods of pedagogy of liberation, dialogical learning and communities of practice methodology. Techniques that understand our thinking and learning experiences as collective transformation processes. The program is designed for active young people from EGYPT, LEBANON, TUNISIA, PALESTINE AND SPAIN who are involved on ongoing campaigns on social justice or have some experience in training social processes. See the content

1) TRAINING OF TRAINERS – Madrid Title: Social Transformation Program: Method and Agenda Dates: The training is divided in two stages Residential: Intensive training: 40 hours. From 25th to 29th of September 2014 (both included, arrival should be the 24th, departure the 30th) Online training: 48 hours work: 20 hours to be done from the 13th of October until the 9th of November and 18 hours work when you implement your training. Residential stage will take place in Madrid (Details will be provided to participants) Contact: communication@foundationforfuture.org

Participants: Young citizens from Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine and Lebanon

2) CS to CS: ORGANIZING FOR SOCIAL CHANGE – Barcelona Title: Civil Society to Civil Society Social Transformation Program: Method and Agenda Dates: From the 22nd of September until the 9th of November: The training has an online part and a face to face part: Residential: Intensive training: 56 hours. From 3rd to 9th of October 2014 (both included) Online training: Practical work on each participant’s campaign. From the 22nd of September until the 9th of November. The online training will be based on practical work designing your social transformation campaign, with 6 on-line live sessions (one per week) and direct work on each participant’s campaign, with the advice and coach of the course facilitator and the rest of the group. Contact: communication@foundationforfuture.org

Participants: Young citizens from Egypt, Tunisia, Palestine and Lebanon

¿Primaveras quemadas? Oriente Medio, focos de un incendio

Las primaveras árabes inauguraron un ciclo de acción colectiva global, que ha recorrido medio mundo impulsando dinámicas democratizadoras. De forma sorprendente los movimientos sociales de Oriente Medio saltaban a la esfera pública derrocando dictadores, innovando usos sociales para las nuevas tecnologías, gestionando de forma participativa complejos procesos de movilización…

Las esperanzas de cambio que portaban las primaveras árabes han ido difuminándose de la mano de la desestabilización de la zona, las derivas autoritarias y las inercias continuistas. Per, o más allá de de los discursos interesados y las informaciones periodísticas ¿Cómo están viviendo los movimientos sociales de la zona estos tiempos de incertidumbre? ¿Cómo construir el cambio social en contextos de extrema dificultad? ¿Qué perspectivas de cambio siguen manteniendo de cara al futuro? ¿Qué comparten estos procesos con los que estamos impulsando a esta orilla del Mediterráneo?

Éstas y otras reflexiones se compartieron en las jornadas celebradas el 23, 26 y 30 de septiembre en los espacios Teatro Barrio y FUHEM de Madrid. Con el hastag #primaverasquemadas se pueden seguir las informaciones que se dieron. Aemás, puedes volver a ver alguna de las jornadas en el siguinete link: http://bambuser.com/v/4954315

Egypt Begins Surveillance Of Facebook, Twitter, And Skype On Unprecedented Scale

BuzzFeed: Egyptians’ online communications are now being monitored by the sister company of an American cybersecurity firm, giving the Egyptian government an unprecedented ability to comb through data from Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, among others.

See Egypt, the sister company of the U.S.-based Blue Coat, won the contract over the summer, beating out the British Gamma System, and the Israeli-founded Narus System. See Egypt has begun monitoring Egyptians’ online communications, according to several Egyptian government officials who spoke to BuzzFeed News.

“See Egypt has already worked with the government and has strong ties to the State Security Services,” said one official. He asked to remain anonymous, to protect his position within the government. “They were a natural choice and their system is already winning praise.”

While Egypt has tracked online communication in the past using surveillance systems that allowed officials to loosely monitor local networks, See Egypt is the first time the government will be widely using the Deep Packet Inspection technology that enables geolocation, tracking, and extensive monitoring of internet traffic.

“Our job as a company is to give them the system. I train the government how to run it and we give them the program,” Ali Miniesy, the CEO of See Egypt, told BuzzFeed News. He confirmed that his company, which is registered in Egypt, had submitted a tender to provide surveillance services for Egypt, but did not say whether that tender had been accepted.

He said they had been contracted to provide Egypt’s State Security with the system, and to teach officials how to comb through data gathered from email accounts and social media sites.

“The program, the training we give, can also be used to penetrate WhatsApp, Viber, Skype, or other programs if needed,” said Miniesy, adding it was a system similar to that used by most Western governments, including the United States.

Los retos de los jóvenes en los países árabes

Tres años después de la llamada Primavera Árabe, la situación de los jóvenes en los países árabes con respecto a oportunidades laborales no ha cambiado nada. De hecho, los cambios propiciados por las protestas de 2011 no han mejorado la situación socioeconómica y en el peor de los casos han degenerado en conflictos armados. Ahora bien, siguen vivos los sentimientos de exasperación e indignación que motivaron a miles de jóvenes a encabezar las protestas de 2011 contra unos regímenes autocráticos. Y aunque el fervor revolucionario se haya apagado, el activismo de los jóvenes sigue vivo en nuevas formas de compromiso político en Egipto, Túnez y otros países árabes. (read more on IE Med)

From Civil Society to Civil Society: Organizing Social Change

REGISTRATION

Foundation For the Future an Organization based in Jordan and acting in all the MENA region promoting democracy and Human Rights in cooperation with the International Institute for Nonviolent Action are organizing a residental and online training on ORGANIZING OF SOCIAL CHANGE. Its aim is to provide a space to think about our movements, our campaigns, to share with others how we are doing and how we can improve and connect our struggles.

Minimum of 12 maximum of 28 participants coming from different realities at both sides of the Mediterranean. The Training From Civil Soceity to Civil Society: Organizing social change is designed for people active in ongoing campaigns involved in social justice. This training is valuable especially for new to middle experienced activists, but it can also be done by experienced activists willing to rethink about their movements.

Requirements:

• Each participant has to come with a concrete campaign he will work on. A campaign is a set of interventions designed to achieve a specific change, within a specific time, that contributes for the social change your group is looking for.
• Good level of English to follow up the trainings is mandatory.

Dates:

From the 22nd of September until the 9th of November: The training has an online part and a face to face part:

• Residential: Intensive  training: 56 hours. From 3rd to 9th of October 2014 (both included)
• Online training: Practical work on each participant’s campaign. From the 22^nd of September until the 9^th of November. The online training will be based on practical work designing your social transformation campaign, with 6 on-line live sessions (one per week) and direct work on each participant’s campaign, with the advice and coach of the course facilitator and the rest of the group.

Place:

Residential stage will take place in Barcelona (Details will be provided to participants)

Expenses:

For those candidates coming from abroad that are finally accepted, travel and accommodations costs will be covered.

REGISTRATION

Training of Trainers in Madrid: Nonviolent social transformation

REGISTRATION

From 25th to 29th September, Training  for Trainers on Nonviolent Social Transformation will be organized in Madrid. Participants in social movements from both sides of the Mediterranean come together to improve and connect processes and collective intelligences through learning, designing educational processes that will improve the capacity of movements and organizations.

Both sides of the Mediterranean are now involved in struggles for social justice, for real democracies where people can play an active role in the decisions affecting their lives. From Spain to Greece, from Tunis to Lebanon there is a wave of emerging movements proposing new ways of organizing, and questions like how to improve our movements to make them more effective? How can we improve our skills, our competencies as human right defenders to struggle for justice? Are, among others, questions present in those movements.

Thus, the course is set up as a space to think about our movements and campaigns from the perspective of training. Transformation processes are learning processes and learning processes are transformation itself. So, the more this relationship is synergistic, Training-Transformation, the greater the impact of our initiatives.

This course has been developed by the Jordanian organization  Foundation for the Future, in cooperation with NOVACT, funded by Spanish Agency for International Cooperation, AECID. For this, we have combined the principles and methods of pedagogy of liberation, dialogical learning and communities of practice methodology. Techniques that understand our thinking and learning experiences as a collective transformation processes.

Requirements

This conference is designed for a maximum of 28 people from different realities of Mediterranean countries. It is designed for people active in ongoing campaigns involved in social justice and that have some experience in training processes, or that are designing training processes. This training is valuable especially for new to middle experienced activists acting as trainers, but it can also be done by experienced trainers willing to rethink about their training processes.

• Each participant has to come with a concrete training he will work on. A training he/she wants to develop in their own reality or context, in their own organization or network.
• Good level of English to follow up the trainings is mandatory

Dates 

The training is divided in two stages

• 1^st stage: Intensive residential training: 40 hours. From 25th to 29th of September 2014 (both included, arrival should be the 24th, departure the 30th)
• 2^nd stage: Online training: 48 hours work: 20 hours to be done from the 13^th of October until the 9^th of November and 18 hours work when you implement your training (expected to be done before the end of 2014).

Face to face stage will take place in Madrid (Details will be provided to participants)

 

Expenses:

For those candidates coming from abroad that are finally accepted, travel and accommodations costs will be covered.

 

REGISTRATION

OPINION: “Should we fight the system or be the change?”

Published on Waging Nonviolence

It is an old question in social movements: Should we fight the system or “be the change we wish to see”? Should we push for transformation within existing institutions, or should we model in our own lives a different set of political relationships that might someday form the basis of a new society?

Over the past 50 years — and arguably going back much further — social movements in the United States have incorporated elements of each approach, sometimes in harmonious ways and other times with significant tension between different groups of activists.

In the recent past, a clash between “strategic” and “prefigurative” politics could be seen in the Occupy movement. While some participants pushed for concrete political reforms — greater regulation of Wall Street, bans on corporate money in politics, a tax on millionaires, or elimination of debt for students and underwater homeowners — other occupiers focused on the encampments themselves. They saw the liberated spaces in Zuccotti Park and beyond — with their open general assemblies and communities of mutual support — as the movement’s most important contribution to social change. These spaces, they believed, had the power foreshadow, or “prefigure,” a more radical and participatory democracy.

الحلقة الأولى من سلسلة المواطنة : الحرية

Spain / Lebanon: Organizing for Social Change

1st-3rd may 2014, Barcelona

PARTICIPATION AND DEMOCRACY

This training is designed, under the Masar Spanish program, with the intention of serving as a place of reflection on our movements, our organizations, our campaigns. It is a space for sharing with others our ways of doing and acting against the injustices of the world, and from there see how we can improve and connect our struggles.

Questions like: How can we improve the effectiveness of our strategies and our struggles? How can we improve our work with others? How can we move from being reactive to being proactive movements?

This training is structured around specific examples of campaigns and active movements, proposing some key design strategies of nonviolent struggle, which we believe can contribute to better organize our movement elements.

We are joined permanently in our walk as defenders of human rights.

Click to check Workshop Agenda

بيان صحفي: إطلاق حملة “مش ساكتة” لمبادرة خريطة التحرّش

بيان صحفي: إطلاق حملة “مش ساكتة” لمبادرة خريطة التحرّش

القاهرة، 5 مارس 2014 –  أطلقت مبادرة خريطة التحرّش في شهر فبراير حملة “مش ساكتة”، لتشجيع النساء على التصدي للتحرّش والاعتداء الجنسي الذي يتعرضن أو تتعرض له الأخريات حولهن في المجال العام، وأن يقمن بدور فاعل في مقاومة وباء التحرّش من خلال كسر حاجز الصمت. وتقوم الحملة بشكل رئيسي على عرض أفكار حول الطرق المختلفة التي يمكن للنساء اتباعها في اتخاذ موقف ضد التحرّش الجنسي، كما توضح كيف أن كل خطوة، كبيرة كانت أم صغيرة، تساهم في إنهاء القبول المجتمعي للتحرّش والاعتداء الجنسي في مصر.

وقد تم إطلاق حملة “مش ساكتة” على الإنترنت عبر مواقع التواصل الاجتماعي من خلال نشر بوسترات تضم بعض المعلومات والنصائح التي تمكن النساء من مواجهة التحرّش الجنسي الذي يحدث لهن أو لأخريات حولهن، كما شجعت الحملة النساء على إرسال بعض النصائح والإرشادات حول تجاربهن في التصدي للتحرّش الجنسي والتي تمت مشاركتها مع الأخريات على مواقع التواصل الخاصة بخريطة التحرّش. كذلك، طالبت الحملة النساء بالمشاركة من خلال بوسترات يعرضن فيها شهادات شخصية عن الخطوات التي اتخذنها في مواجهة وقائع التحرّش الجنسي، أو عمل فيديوهات عن قصصهن بالتعاون مع خريطة التحرّش، وذلك بهدف تشجيع النساء والفتيات الأخريات لفعل المثل ومواجهة هذه الجرائم.

“مش ساكتة” تأتي كرد فعل للوضع الذي وصلت إليه قضية التحرّش الجنسي في مصر، حيث تتفشى ظاهرة لوم الضحية من جانب المجتمع، بالإضافة لتمتع المتحرش بحصانة من أي عقاب مجتمعي وغالبا من أي عقاب قانوني، الأمر الذي دفع النساء للصمت عما يحدث لهن وساعد على تفشي المشكلة بنسب وصلت حد الوباء. كما أن الأبحاث التي نجريها في خريطة التحرش وخبراتنا في التواصل المجتمعي في 17 محافظة عبر مصر، أظهرت أن صمت بعض النساء حين يتعرضن للتحرّش الجنسي عادة ما يفهم على أنه موافقة على التحرش الذي يتعرضن له، وأن المارة والأشخاص المتواجدين أثناء وقوع التحرّش يتدخلون بصورة أكبر للمساعدة عندما تقوم النساء والفتيات بالدفاع عن أنفسهن والتعبير عن رفضهن ومقاومتهن للتحرّش الذي يتعرضن له.

ومن المخطط أن تتوسع حملة “مش ساكتة” في العمل على الأرض بصورة أكبر، من خلال بوسترات الحملة المطبوعة والملصقات والجرافيتي واللقاءات المختلفة.في هذه الأثناء، حملة “مش ساكتة” مستمرة، ويمكن للنساء أن يشاركن بقصصهن وخبراتهن من خلال الكتابة على بوسترات/ملصقات الحملة المخصصة لذلك وإرسالها لنا على صفحتنا على فيسبوك أو بريدنا media@harassmap.org

لمعلومات أكثر ولتنزيل البوسترات الخاصة بالكتابة يمكنكم الدخول على  harassmap.org/meshsakta أو تابعونا على الفيسبوك وتويتر، أو مراسلتنا على بريدنا media@harassmap.org

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خريطة التحرّش هي مبادرة قائمة بشكل رئيسي على مبدأ التطوع، وتسعى لإنهاء التقبل المجتمعي للتحرّش والاعتداء الجنسي في مصر. خريطة التحرّش تعمل من خلال نهج متكامل يجمع بين تكنولوجيا الإبلاغ عبر الرسائل القصيرة (SMS) والإنترنت ووضعها على الخريطة مع الأبحاث وحملات الإعلام والتواصل، بالاضافة لأكثر من 1000 متطوع في برنامج التواصل المجتمعي في 17 محافظة في مصر، خريطة التحرّش هي مبادرة محتضنة من جانب جمعية نهضة المحروسة، لمعلومات أخرى يمكن الدخول على http://harassmap.org