Basebuilding and community organizers do incredible work in our communities. Learning Circles provide an opportunity for organizers to come together; share knowledge, experiences, and resources; and center strategic visions. Learning Circles hold space to cultivate strong relationships and trust between our basebuilding and community organizing partners to support collective learning and growth.
Learning circle topics are selected and guided by the needs and priorities of grassroots, basebuilding organizations. Learning Circles provide in-depth programming to participants that includes facilitated workshops, lectures, discussions, and application of skills. At the end of the Learning Circle, participants share back a tangible project, plan, or action with the entire group. In-person Learning Circles are typically 4 days long, and virtual Learning Circles are delivered over a period of several months.
Our Learning Circles use popular education principles. Learning Circle organizing, learning, and sharing of frameworks deeply value participation and experiential learning. We promote the development of evaluation systems that recognize local power as a necessary part of campaigns and solutions. Our Learning Circles represent one strategy we use to build power in communities that are often marginalized in policy making or in decision-making around long-term community infrastructure change.
"Some of the things that we are really grateful for through the Learning Circles is getting prepared and having a space, an intentional space, to come together as community organizers—understanding that it is very complex to organize [and] knowing that as a team, as a community, even as a practice community, that we knew we could come back with questions/concerns. Ask [fellow organizers] how we're navigating through this time and find solutions."
— Participant, Disaster Justice Virtual Learning Circle
“There are tangible take-aways from everyone we have an opportunity to connect with and see their organizing efforts. We value each vision and resource to learn how to apply it appropriately in our own communities.”
— Participant, Learning Circle in Albuquerque, NM
Basebuilding organizing focuses on priorities determined by neighborhoods, cities, and communities. It involves designing programs or policies that center those who are most impacted and directly involves community members in the implementation of solutions to build community infrastructure, capacity, and power. Community organizers who center basebuilding work can bolster and transform traditional public health approaches and traditional forms of policy work that often fail to involve impacted communities directly in the development of solutions. Building capacity and resourcing basebuilding organizing through Learning Circles builds community power to transform inequities and disparities through the pursuit of health, justice, and racial equity.
