Invitational Events

In addition to hosting broad conversations about the shared set of questions and challenges facing those who protect and fight for rights, we also hope to create spaces for practitioners who are deeply engaged in a human rights organization or social movement demanding rights. 

Our focus here is not on particular rights or particular places, but on the strength of the organizations and movements for human rights – their working culture and effectiveness – and the solidarity among them and ways it can be deepened. Our focus is on power: power that can be built and deployed by organizations and movements and how that power can be extended through rigorous forms of solidarity.  

We believe that making these more intimate conversations successful requires active curation – ensuring that participants share some context in common, know something about each other’s goals and situations and can focus on specific questions relevant to their work. They require spaces of trust that are thoughtfully facilitated to allow constructive yet frank exchanges. We will convene a range of such intensive and focused meetings across a year, assembling diverse groups and mixing people playing leading roles in front-line organizations and movements with those playing similar roles in global, national or regional support organizations. 

Our smallest, most demanding discussions in terms of time and concentration are week-long events for groups of around 20 people, all of whom have assumed responsibility for the health of their organizations, for the shape of their movements, and for the alliances they make with others. 

Participation in these events is by invitation. If you are engaged in these roles, or if you know people who are and would value joining such conversations, you can recommend them, or let us know of your own interest in being invited to a relevant discussion.