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Digital Organizing Resources

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 15:22:47 +0000

Digital Organizing Resources Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 08/30/2022 - 09:22

The Colorado Trust partnered with researchers from the Research Hub for Youth Organizing at the �鶹��Ƶ to produce a suite of resources highlighting best practices for digital organizing. These resources, available for download, are intended to be easily accessible and provide guidance for digital organizing efforts.

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Youth Activism for Social Justice: Lessons from Virtual Scholar Sessions

Anonymous — Wed, 25 May 2022 16:24:33 +0000

Youth Activism for Social Justice: Lessons from Virtual Scholar Sessions Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/25/2022 - 10:24

Ishita Pradhan & Ben Kirshner

Between January and April 2022, youth activists and scholars from around the world convened virtually to explore their shared interests in social justice and political change. Panelists discussed strategies and lessons learned from youth-led social movements for democracy, peace, and human rights in non-dominant parts of the world.

publicly circulated image of protests in Bangladesh [photographer unknown]

The monthly sessions were organized by the Democracy Moves International Scholars network, a collaborative project of CU Boulder’s Research Hub for Youth Organizing and SNF Agora Fellow Scott Warren. Youth activists and researchers discussed social change goals and strategies, made new connections with each other, and considered how research could support youth organizing. Session #1 discussed youth experiences and activism in Zambia, Bangladesh, and Nigeria; session #2 focused on peace-building and participatory budgeting Cameroon, Mexico, and Kenya; session #3 examined young people’s collective responses to digital repression in Thailand.

These Spring 2022 sessions provided a unique opportunity to exchange ideas about how young people are rising to meet challenges of authoritarian rule, armed conflict, corruption, and shrinking civic space. Here we highlight five takeaways for organizing and movement-building.

Leveraging non-partisan youth identity

In highly politically polarized countries, youth organizers wanted to keep their movements from being co-opted by political parties, which many viewed as corrupt and ineffective. In response, panelists talked about mobilizing young people around their shared identities as youth. Maha Mirza, a scholar activist in Bangladesh, shared that the protests were spontaneous responses to certain policies and events (for e.g., two high school students getting killed in a road accident by a bus). To communicate their non-partisan “youth” identity, Bangladeshi protesters dressed up in school uniforms and carried their ID cards for display. Similarly, a youth activist from Zambia, Grace Gondwe, emphasized that young people are turned off by political parties and their agendas. Instead, youth-led campaigns in Zambia are focused on issues facing young people, such as livelihoods and addressing economic difficulty.

Forging intergenerational alliances

Organizing across generations of people has been documented in recent social movement research. This ideal of multigenerational coalitions also emerged in the conversations with youth activists. For instance, in Nigeria, underscoring the history of intergenerational activism against suppression of social movements, movement leaders prioritized their shared history and created spaces for younger and older activists to learn about different experiences and movement, thereby building knowledge across generations. In Cameroon, Caryn Dasah shared the example of a peace-building retreat she organized where young people who had been displaced by armed conflict joined together to build community and find support across generations. In non-violent protests and activism in Thailand, Janjira Sombatpoonsiri reported that masses of people, ranging from high school students to university professors, came together to protest the violent and digital repression of the monarchy.

Centering community and local traditions

Several of the youth organizers described how they utilized local traditions, paid explicit attention to indigenous practices, and prioritized community healing in their organizing efforts. For instance, fueled by historical injustices, youth activists in Kenya and Philippines focused their efforts on caring for one another to enable youth leadership. They paid attention to meeting the community’s basic needs, such as provision of mental health services and support, distribution of hygiene and safety kits, COVID-19 specific relief kits, community yoga and meditation, and bike sharing programs. In their efforts to build and sustain peace in Cameroon, youth activists provided care for those who had lost loved ones or faced trauma due to the conflict. They brought people together for a storytelling session around a fireplace, a traditional practice of community building, and discussed the role of community and women in peacebuilding. In the case of participatory budgeting in Mexico, Aline Yunery Zunzunegui López discussed how her organization engaged in culture change and youth organizing by drawing on local cultural practices supporting collaboration and community-building.

Committing to non-violence

An underlying theme across all the youth activist projects discussed in the sessions was the non-violent approach to their work. This principle of non-violence showed up across contexts, whether in building the capacity of women, educating community members to speak up for their rights, or creative responses to state violence, such as through humor, profanity, and “digital deception.”

Taking advantage of digital media tools

Speakers reported on increased digital repression, that is, the use of digital tools to suppress dissent and limit youths’ efforts to organize. In Thailand, for example, the state surveilled social media to find out where and when young people would mobilize. In the face of these challenges, however, youth found unique ways to use and repurpose the same digital tools for their own organizing goals. In the Nigerian case, youth activists used the hashtag #EndSARS to organize small scale protests and file online petitions signed by thousands of people. Youth activists in Thailand repurposed social media tools to deceive the government and keep their protests and movements one step ahead of authorities, such as by spreading misinformation about protest locations and changing the location of their protests at the eleventh hour to mislead the government. Youth also sought to use creative strategies to counter the use of social media by provocateurs seeking to stoke fear and violence among conflicting groups, such as in Cameroon.

The above-mentioned strategies represent only some of the ways youth are organizing collectively, sometimes with older generations, to build strong communities, foster youth leadership, and counter authoritarian or corrupt governments. We need to pay attention to the agency apparent in their activism and organizing to counter the challenges they face in everyday lives. This also calls for creating more knowledge sharing spaces where youth activists and engaged researchers can come together from different geopolitical contexts to exchange ideas, develop strategies, sustain each other, and build their capacity to push forward the right to dissent and organize for social change. The Spring 2022 Democracy Moves Scholars Sessions offered the beginnings of such a space. Given diverse time zones, virtual calling fatigue, varied levels of internet connectivity for activists, and the threat of the ongoing pandemic, among other global struggles, we were not sure how much energy or desire there would be for these virtual sessions. Although relatively small (averaging about 20 people per session), we are heartened by the quality and level of participation in each session. We see value and interest in continuing spaces like these. Stay tuned for updates about upcoming directions for the Research Hub and our role co-leading the Democracy Moves International Scholars Network.

Ishita Pradhan is a Doctoral Candidate in Learning Sciences & Human Development, �鶹��Ƶ

Dr. Ben Kirshner is Professor and Program Chair, Learning Sciences & Human Development, �鶹��Ƶ

During spring 2022 youth activists and scholars from around the world convened virtually to explore their shared interests in social justice and political change. Panelists discussed strategies and lessons learned from youth-led social movements for democracy, peace, and human rights…

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Collaborating with Youth Organizing Groups and Networks

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 15:11:39 +0000

Collaborating with Youth Organizing Groups and Networks Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/24/2017 - 09:11

The Research Hub collaborates closely with youth organizing groups and network and provides relevant and timely research to help them deepen and advance their work.

This area of work launched in September 2016. Graduate student Tafadzwa Tivaringe and Research Associate Siomara Valladares joined co-Principal Investigator Ben Kirshner in exploring the current context of youth community organizing through January 2017.

"As a research team, we specifically sought to identify the issues that youth organizing groups were working on, as well as exploring exactly how our research support could be useful to the field of youth organizing," Valladares explains.

All together, we reached out to 17 different groups/networks. We carried out a total of 12 interviews - 3 interviews with funding agencies, 5 interviews with organizing groups/networks, and 4 interviews with researchers/consultants. From these 12 interviews, we identified school discipline/school-to-prison pipeline, the implementation of restorative practices, and the privatization of schools as priority issues for youth organizing groups. We also learned that there is a need for research translation, greater access to YPAR, data analysis, and accessible survey tools.

With this information, we began initiating relationships with potential youth organizing partners.

As of May 2017, we have initiated several new partnerships with youth organizing groups and networks. You can learn more about our partners and our collaborative work with them on our Partners Page.

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Schools of Opportunity

Anonymous — Sun, 24 Sep 2017 14:48:53 +0000

Schools of Opportunity Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/24/2017 - 08:48

The Schools of Opportunity Recognition Program recognizes public high schools around the nation that are creating remarkable opportunities to learn for all their students.

The Schools of Opportunity project arises out of the reality that existing recognitions strongly favor schools that enroll students who, outside of school, have the richest opportunities.

These recognitions favor high schools that are selective or serve students who are affluent. While many of those schools are indeed outstanding, we believe it important to recognize schools that are excellent because they engage in research-based practices that focus on closing gaps in opportunity, regardless of the students they serve.

Providing the highest-quality education means creating rich opportunities to learn by addressing the educational factors that are under the control of schools. Accordingly, this project recognizes high schools that have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to equity and excellence by giving all students the opportunity to succeed. Based on the principles of the Closing the Opportunity Gap book, we recognized schools for engaging in proven practices that close opportunity gaps for student learning. In doing so, we encourage such practices by bringing attention to what good schooling looks like, by showing policymakers alternative ways to ascertain school performance, and by inspiring schools to build capacity and thus improve learning outcomes for all students.

A recent article in Kappan Magazine highlights the Research Hub's work with Schools of Opportunity to close opportunity gaps for students. According to the article, "No single best practice will close opportunity gaps. Different combinations of research-based practices can meet the needs of a school’s specific students."

To learn more about the Research Hub's work via the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) to close high school opportunity gaps, visit the Schools of Opportunity website.

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CU Boulder School of Education Launches Research Hub

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 20:02:57 +0000

CU Boulder School of Education Launches Research Hub Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/20/2017 - 14:02

CU Boulder’s National Education Policy Center (NEPC) and Center for Community-Based Learning and Research (CU Engage) have received funding from the Ford Foundation to launch a research hub that will contribute relevant and timely research about education policy issues.

Flipping historical paradigms of university-based research, the goal of the research hub is for the work to be in partnership with those in the field and those working within the educational justice movement. The principal investigator (PI) will be Michelle Renée Valladares, who is Associate Director of NEPC. Ben Kirshner, faculty director of CU Engage, and Kevin Welner, Director of NEPC, serve as co-PIs.

"The objective of NEPC and CU Engage is to leverage our expertise and capacity as university researchers so that we can serve as a research hub for building and strengthening the work of organizers, advocates, policymakers and education leaders. We hope to infuse the emerging movement with the best research available," says Kevin Welner, NEPC Director.

The research hub's primary goal is to leverage the resources and potential of education researchers at CU Boulder to produce high quality and accessible research to inform education justice policy. "NEPC will do this by expanding the reach of our Closing the Opportunity Gap projects, and continuing to work with our more than 120 fellows." notes Michelle Renée Valladares, NEPC Associate Director. CU Engage will draw on its expertise and position working thoughtfully and equitably with community groups and educational justice advocates locally and globally.

Both CU Engage and NEPC employ a unique approach to creating and sharing research as a tool to advance social justice. Specifically, they use the power of high-quality research, the democratic mission of a public university, and the social capital of university affiliations to develop publications and projects that address inequalities in our education system and in schools’ surrounding communities. The policy expertise and national foci of NEPC combined with the community-based and participatory research of CU Engage complement each other well.

“This grant is exciting for CU Boulder because it will provide funded graduate research training opportunities in community-based research. Graduate researchers will get training and support to carry out rigorous research that addresses complex public challenges in partnership with community groups,” Kirshner explains.

CU Engage has hired current graduate student Taphy Tivaringe as the CU Engage GRA and newcomer Siomara Valladares, who completed her PhD at UCLA, as the CU Engage Research Associate. NEPC is in the process of hiring a new Research Associate.

CU Engage’s specific contribution will be to focus on research related to youth issues. Young people across the country are engaging in campaigns and movements to improve educational opportunity, dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, and have a voice in the political process. Research is needed that can document the impact of this work and identify best practices when communities or districts implement needed reforms.

Together, NEPC and CU Engage are excited for the opportunity to contribute fresh and meaningful research to the education justice movement locally and beyond.

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