The second installment of our webinar series “On Equal Footing? Decolonial and Empowering Approaches” begins on April 22, 2024, with a focus on Abya Yala. Registration deadline extended: Register here by April 8, 2024!
“This training is exactly what we need in the North-South context!” (Original quote, Series 2023)
This training series is aimed at activists in development policy organizations and initiatives, as well as anyone committed to global justice. We especially invite BIPoC, activists from migrant*
In four modules (you can find details and more information here), we’ll identify internalized colonial patterns and strategies and work together to develop alternative courses of action. We’ll occasionally—and as needed—create safer spaces to accommodate the unique role of BIPoCs and migrant-diasporic participants.
Currently, project work with “partners” from Abya Yala is structured on a highly unequal basis. Funding and guidelines come from Germany, and people from Germany are often deployed to partner countries even though they lack knowledge of local structures. But even in direct collaboration on the ground or in teams here in Germany, racism and other power dynamics are (unconsciously) reproduced. Addressing this reproduction is a comprehensive process. It begins with self-empowerment against these conditions on the part of Black and people of color, and with self-reflection on the part of white people. The voices of migrant and diaspora actors are indispensable for critical discourses on the decolonization of partnership work.
The goal is to work together to develop ideas for alternative courses of action and practices in “partnership work” that are sensitive to racism and power dynamics and that empower people. The series is part of a project funded by the PFQ program and Brot für die Welt. You can find more information about the project and its other focal areas here.