The Centre for Civil Society (CCS) held its Activist Training day in November which was attended by activists from various civil society campaigns such as the Treatment Action Campaign, The Right2Know Campaign, Powerfest, Amnesty International, the Door to Door Foundation, the Zimbabwe Solidarity Movement and youth and gender activists from around Durban.

The training had three sessions: The first was ‘Leadership an Governance’ which focused on the main challenges of leadership in civil society campaigns, what constitutes ‘good governance’ in civil society organisations, the importance of linking with communities and grassroots and strategies to enable / consolidate good governance and the  importance of horizontal solidarity among organisations / campaigns / movements. The session also considered why important campaigns / organisations lose momentum. The trainer for this session was Pat Horn a feminist trade unionist and international co-ordinator of StreetNet International an international federation formed to protect and promote the rights of street vendors and to promote the voice and bargaining power of street vendors throughout the world.

The second session was a focus on Apps for activism and citizen engagement, particularly an App called ‘GrassRoot’. This session detailed what GrassRoot is how it is accessed and what it costs. It also examined how GrassRoot can be used to mobilise for campaigns and what other potential uses it has. Zinhle Miya a community builder, coordinating GrassRoot field work in KwaZulu-Natal was the trainer for this session.

The third session examined the ways in which activists could develop their praxis with a focus on Paulo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’. This session, in an interactive way, considered: what is knowledge, who are the ‘knowledge holders’, theory and praxis, the ways in which oppression is reproduced through teaching and learning and the idea of ‘conscientization’. The trainer for this session was Saajidha Sader who is based at UKZN’s School of Education. Her main areas of expertise are Social Justice Education, Feminist and Freirian Pedagogy.