Democracy Skills Training for Civil Society Professionals

Session Submission Type: TLC Workshop

Session Description

The proposed workshop is an innovative training that builds upon existing practices for civil society professionals to foster democratic cultures among their constituents and that incorporates artistic and non-academic pedagogical approaches, such as Theater of the Oppressed. An abbreviated version of the workshop will be facilitated with the latter third of the time-slot reserved for reflections, questions, and feedback. The workshop will be interactive and involve exercises and forms of play that make democratic culture-building an engaging, enjoyable, and desirable process. It aims for TLC attendees to leave with materials they might facilitate for their own students and constituents and with new tools and ideas to nurture democratic cultures in their spaces. The workshop will be highly adaptable for a wide-range of ages, education levels, and familiarity with democracy.

Jonathan Mendoza is a political organizer, educator, writer, and artist with over a decade of experience as a teaching artist and organizing trainer, creating and facilitating community organizing, arts, and social justice workshops and curricula for youth, college students, educators, and grassroots social movement organizations in the United States and Mexico. He is a graduate student in Georgetown University’s MA in Democracy and Governance program, headed by Dr. Elton Skendaj, who has provided leadership and technical expertise on practitioner projects for democracy with the United Nations, U.S. Institute of Peace, Hague Appeal for Peace, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, the Wilson Center, and the Open Society Institute.

Democratization is often a task undertaken primarily by government and advocacy NGO leaders. However, case after case has demonstrated that consolidated and sustainable democracy relies on a strong cultural foundation among much broader segments of a country’s populace. How can the cultural practices of democracy—cooperative governance and economies, civil dialogue, media literacy, conflict mitigation, all across notable identity and ideological differences—be nurtured among these broader publics? And with so many actors and norms working against democracy, how can this nurturing of democratic cultures be pursued efficiently and practically? Civil society professionals, like teachers, religious leaders, and community organization directors, hold critical roles in this regard. They can receive training to learn tangible democracy skills and practices themselves and then facilitate such a training to disseminate these learnings to their constituents. In effect, this makes them critical intermediaries connecting the pro-democracy leaders of government offices and political organizations with the constituents they ultimately serve. However, any pro-democracy training material must be succinct and accessible for the often already overburdened civil society professionals as well as for their trainees in order to be effective.

Under the direction of Dr. Skendaj, Jonathan is researching established methods and materials to train civil society professionals to disseminate concrete skills that aid the development of democratic cultures under emerging and struggling democracies. He is first researching the workshop and curriculum materials of state and non-state democracy advocacy organizations designed for civil society leaders, such as the Council of Europe’s “Living Democracy” manuals and the Goethe Institute’s “Training Manual for Civic Education and Coexistence,” and consolidating this research into an annotated bibliography. Second, he is identifying gaps and opportunities for innovation in the extant trainings to develop more efficient and effective approaches. Lastly, he will develop new and updated workshop materials that can be used in civil society spaces like classrooms and community organizations to advance democratic cultures and practices in key constituencies globally. It will aim to maximize impact by transformatively exposing participants to the value of democracy and democratic cultures within the often minimal window of time that many civil society leaders are afforded for such subject matter. The opportunity to facilitate this workshop for attendees of TLC at APSA will elicit valuable feedback that can be incorporated into subsequent iterations of the training, benefitting future trainers and trainees, as well as democratization in their communities.

Sub Unit

• TLC at APSA

Chair

• Jonathan Mendoza Georgetown University

Presenter

• Jonathan Mendoza Georgetown University