Effective community engagement can be an essential aspect of human rights and social justice work, and yet remains a challenge for many practitioners. This workshop will examine questions such as: Where do you begin? How do you identify and build relationships with community members? How do you effectively engage and communicate with community members? How do you ensure that engagement is inclusive, equitable and reaches marginalized voices? What does meaningful participation look like? How do you ensure accountability? What are the relevant ethical considerations?
This workshop will use interactive learning techniques and draw on practical examples, including participants’ experiences. By the end of this workshop, participants will be better able to:
- Critically examine how community engagement can be a valuable approach to human rights and social justice work;
- Identify and analyze various elements of community engagement using a rights-based approach;
- Identify community members, assess needs, identify opportunities for collaboration, effectively communicate with key stakeholders, address conflicts, and develop implementation strategies;
- Identify and discuss challenges (including ethical, logistical, organizational) that may be encountered through this work, and how they might be addressed; and
- Apply best/promising practices to their work.
This workshop is designed for those who are currently working or plan to work in the field of social justice and human rights and want to strengthen their capacity to work effectively with grassroots communities, whether that be through advocacy, campaigning, direct service, grants management, or other areas of work.
Workshop activities will be adapted according to the needs and goals of participants based on the pre-workshop survey that will be shared with all those who register. A certificate of completion will be given to those who attend the entire workshop.
About the facilitator: Nahal Zamani is an Advocacy Program Manager at the Center for Constitutional Rights, where she directs CCR’s advocacy and campaigns in the U.S. Nahal’s advocacy portfolio includes challenging the NYPD’s abusive stop and frisk practices and other discriminatory policing practices; economic and gender justice work; and the persecution and criminalization of LGBTQ communities. Nahal advocates regularly on a range of issues before elected officials, the UN and the public. On behalf of CCR, Nahal engages directly with impacted communities to identify collaborative campaign opportunities.
A certificate of participation will be granted to all those who complete the full day of training. Individuals who complete three workshops offered as part of the Human Rights Training Series will receive an ISHR Human Rights Training Series certificate of completion.
Remote participation via Zoom may be possible. Please contact humanrightsed@columbia.edu with the subject “Community Engagement Workshop” for more information.
Early bird rate of $345 for those who register by October 18th.Regular rate of $395. Columbia students are eligible for a 40% discount if enrolled by the early bird deadline (please email humanrightsed@columbia.edu for more information). We will also offer a limited number of reduced rates for those wish significant financial need.
Prospective participants who wish to apply for a need-based discount, as well as registered participants, are asked to complete the following survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfX8w067NQyAHeLyA6u5ooyqYbzdLrv...
