Solidarity Encounters
Join us for a series of interactive, online learning events for donors, funders, and other allies who want to deepen their knowledge about and solidarity with Grassroots International and our movement partners.
Previous Encounter:
Cooking Up Solidarity: A Fundraiser for Palestine with Chef Reem
Join us for an interactive cooking class and fundraiser for social movements in Palestine, with Palestinian-Syrian Chef and activist Reem Assil. She is the owner of Reem’s California, a nationally acclaimed Palestinian-Arab restaurant. The session includes a discussion on the connection between food and land rights.
Donor Engagement Groups
The Grassroots International Donor Engagement Group is an intensive practicum in Global Solidarity Philanthropy for donors interested in deepening their support for and solidarity with grassroots social movements in the Global South.
Each DEG cohort is made up of 15-20 donors. Over the course of ten sessions, which take place over five months, cohort members participate in political education about:
- Intersecting systems of oppression, such as white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, and specific ways they are impacting people across the globe;
- The work that Grassroots International’s partners are doing to transform those systems;
- Critiques of the role of traditional philanthropy in perpetuating systemic injustices; and
- Global Solidarity Philanthropy, a radical approach to giving based on long-term reciprocal partnerships between donors/funders and grassroots movement groups.
As part of the DEG, donors explore how they can personally deepen their own support for grassroots social movements, and also learn how to raise awareness in their own communities and inspire other people to become long-term supporters of social movements, in alignment with the Solidarity Philanthropy model.
Each DEG has a specific focus related to one of Grassroots International’s areas of work. This could be a geographic focus, or an issue-specific focus, such as grassroots feminisms, food sovereignty, or healing justice.
In each DEG, cohort members connect with Grassroots International movement partners working in a particular region or on an issue and learn from them about their work, and then support that work by raising funds for it. At the culmination of the program, cohort members jointly plan and lead a virtual House Party to share the learnings they have gained over the course of the program. All cohort members will invite people from their communities to attend the House Party and explore how they can also become involved in supporting movements.
The program is based on a popular education methodology and incorporates mística, a pedagogical practice that comes out of Indigenous people’s cosmovision and further developed by rural social movements. The use of mística engages the heart, mind, and spirit of participants, and is focused on building a collective orientation and radical love among people working together to build a better world, and creating an opening for deep individual and group transformation.
2022 Donor Engagement Group in Solidarity with Palestine
The upcoming Donor Engagement Group, which will run from June until October 2022, will be focused on Palestine, and will seek to deepen donors’ understanding of and solidarity with Palestinian movements for liberation. There will be nine sessions of 2-4 hours each, as well as some additional reading and supplementary work outside of the sessions.
The program will include místicas, guest speakers, dialogic learning, art-making, and more! For more information and to apply, click here. No previous fundraising experience is necessary, just a desire to be in a learning community with other donors, and to take your engagement to the next level.
Testimonials from Past donor-activist engagement cohorts
