Reflecting on our Practice
Reflecting on our Practice is the bedrock of our work. We convene spaces where activists, community organisers, faith leaders and funders can interrogate their own practice, critically reflecting on how we maintain or transform relations of power. The Solidarity Hub is an annual event that brings together people from throughout the region and beyond. The Learning Hubs are smaller spaces for deeper reflection, and our Critical Conversations explore topical issues affecting struggles of communities and their organisations.
The methodology on how they facilitate and how they listen makes a difference. It is not about producing outcomes, but about how people relate to one another in one room.
– Collaborator
Support Local Agency
We Support Local Agency by inviting organisations to apply for small grants for social justice action through our Solidarity Support Facility. Instead of asking applicants to guess what funders want, the Solidarity Support Facility responds to the realities and demands that change agents face. It responds to those who live their struggles to determine what will be done. Grants of up to $2,000 are made to organisations in 8 countries in the region.
Amplify Community Voice
We Amplify Community Voice instead of our own by creating space and platforms for local voice to be heard. We identify innovative actions that have the potential to benefit a wider community of organisers and potentially could resonate with others involved in social justice work, and invest financial and technical support to further develop those initiatives. These often take the form of video and print publications, applications, or simply guides on how to do things. ACT Ubumbano does not speak on behalf of communities but supports them in speaking for themselves.
Connecting People Globally
By Connecting People through our convenings, grants programme, and facilitation approaches, we contribute to relationships of solidarity that work in both directions. ACT Ubumbano works with people from the global north and the global south in shaping new ways of relating that go beyond money and resources, and instead invites a shared critique of traditional practice. In this way, bonds of solidarity across realities are forged, and peoples’ struggles for emancipation strengthened.
Resourcing Solidarity
Through our work focussing on Resourcing Solidarity, we look for new resources to allow us to increase the capacity of the Solidarity Support Facility. We bring insights from reflecting on our own practice into spaces where decolonised funding and power relations are explored, both locally and globally.
