Transformative Leadership

Transforming Leaders into Animators

The goals of this course are to a) strengthen our capacity to facilitate the process of empowerment within ourselves, work places and communities; b) identify assets and challenges; and c) address barriers to holistic well-being. Paulo Freire’s philosophy and methods serve as a foundation and framework to guide our collective learning. 

A key goal of this course is to increase the number of people who have high consciousness of their inner being, social structure, and power and who stand for justice and peace. The course is facilitated in such a way that individuals and the group are enabled to discover change that is relevant for them. [1] Participants will be equipped to train other community members and meet the following objectives listed below. This course is for public health students, non-profit workers, government agencies, grassroots organizations, and community members who want to organize in their communities for change.

Objectives

• Develop training material, practice facilitation, and receive feedback for a change
• Raise consciousness of the intersectionality of themselves, social issues, and communities
• Be introspective (derun-nigar: to look at one’s inner being) [2]
• Learn to listen, share, reflect and discover a strong and common feeling/theme of the group
• Identify and analyze common themes arising from common feelings
• Develop processes for learning and dialogue
• Learn to ask the “right” questions

Why Community Transformation?

A response from co-facilitators, Stan Foster, Sumaya Karimi, Emily Lemon, and Anushka Rushna: “The short answer is that it works! Our combined experiences have allowed us to understand that our emotions fuel us to open ourselves to listen and to reflect on ourselves, and our relationships with the world. Through our personal transformations and bursts of enlightenment, our aims are to create a safe space and foster hope, justice, and equity.” 

Methodology

We utilize popular education, Paulo Freire’s philosophy and methods, asset-based community development, and collaborative leadership to guide our collective learning. Traditional education ignores feelings, but this methodology focuses on feelings, (heart), analysis (mind) and action (body or doing) for change. We believe that feelings connected to motivation lead to motivation breaking through apathy. When apathy is broken, then it naturally leads to action on a personal, organizational, and/or community level.