Wednesday, 19 April 2017
Sometimes, political organizations organize for organizing’s sake – to recruit people into the fold, to build solidarities, but its essence gets lost when translated from one generation to the next. More than how, why are we organizing? For whom are we organizing for? These are the difficult questions “Youth Leadership Training: Leadership Through Organizing” ambitiously wants to answer last March 16-17, 2017 at Quezon City, Philippines.
Attended by youth leaders from all over the Philippines, the event has gathered insights from different resource persons and the participants themselves who also came from various backgrounds. “Organizing is leadership from the ground up, we don’t go to the community and impose our issues on them, and their issues should become our issue.” Wilson Requez, resource person on community organizing said. “The onus is on us to be persistent – we want them to be leaders themselves, help them realize their capacity, assist; the goal is to put ourself out of work.” Ipay Dapitan, resource person on student organizing added.
The training included plenary and world café sessions, with workshops on how to strategize to organize for change and power. Ideas like incorporating social enterprises into their organizing and leadership building strategies surfaced, and ideas of campaigns with the local mass struggles and rethinking of organizational narratives were also discussed.