Pakistan Program on Climate Justice

CSIDC is partnering with AktivAsia (activist educators and facilitators passionate about activist learning), to pilot a training program to strengthen the leadership and organizing capacity of local campaigns and groups working on climate and energy, recognizing that the problems of climate may be intrinsically connected to other issues.

Listening Exercise

We started the program with a listening exercise in order to inform the design and execution of future learning experiences.

Through conversations with 39 practitioners and researchers who work on Climate Change and related issues, we learnt about the context and lived experiences of communities affected by climate change. Our learnings from these conversations were supplemented with secondary review of approximately 70 research articles.

The Listening Exercise helped contextualize and inform the design and execution of future learning experiences around community level organizing. We discovered a clear case and need to focus on themes such as: campaign strategy, team development and snowflake, public narrative.

Action Research Dialogue

In July 2022, we hosted an Action Research Dialogue for grassroots campaigners and organizers to hold room for cross pollination amongst progressive groups and campaigns through dialogue and reflective exercises.

The training brought together 27 diverse activists and campaigners from Sindh and South Punjab belonging to 11 different campaigns.

As a result, CSIDC and the participants were able to learn from each other’s experiences of success and failure, develop a deeper shared understanding of the issues activists face at the ground level, and the initiatives they have taken to address them and explore how and what happens within a campaign that contributes to its impact.

Pakistan Organizing Leadership Training

In October 2022, we held a five-day online workshop called the “Leadership, Organizing and Action” with 27 participants from across Pakistan. It was a first-of-its-kind training in Pakistan on Organizing, and introduced participants to an organizer’s perspective on leadership developed by Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, and his associates.

The training sought to strengthen the seed of developing a collective organizing capacity around climate justice and related issues in the wake of Pakistan’s largest climate disaster; build the relational power to seed an organizing-education program in Pakistan and developed each participant’s leadership capacity, by learning how to articulate a story, build intentional relationships, structure teams with shared goals and ground rules, strategically turn resources into power to achieve a goal, and translate strategy into an effective action.

Vision 2023

Our vision for 2023 is to translate and contextualize the “Leadership, Organizing, and Action curriculum”, increase teaching capacity in organizing, and support grassroots organizations in building people power.

1- Curriculum Contextualization

The process involves three to four rounds of review by the team, urdu translation by a professional translator with experience of the context we are operating in and insights of local experts.

2- Training of the Trainers

Potential coaches from our learning exercises this year and the Pakistan Organizing Training will be trained in the 20 hour Training for Trainers program.

3- Teaching

We will support grassroots organizations to learn and implement organizing using our contextualized curriculum and local training team.