Strategic Planning

The overall aim of the programme is to inspire and support collaborative approaches to mobilisation around shared equity and justice concerns, promoting the inclusion of gender equality principles and practices within these approaches. The programme objectives are to:

• To promote understanding of the common grounds and shared goals between many women’s movements and other social justice movements.
• To consider the strategic value for movements of combining forces.
• To promote honest discussion of the obstacles to integrating and highlighting gender equality in the work of other social justice movements, and to working together in a more engaged, constructive way.
• To provide spaces and opportunities for movements and activists to come together to generate and share knowledge on effective approaches, strategies and conceptual frameworks.

Social justice movements are able to generate deep and lasting changes at levels that policy change and development interventions alone cannot achieve. However, gender equality goals remain low on the agendas of many social justice movements, and women’s movements have not always considered other forms of injustice within struggles for gender equality. In the light of enormous external challenges across different regions - fundamentalisms, militarism, accelerating climate change, pervasive gender-based violence and financial crises - building inclusive alliances around shared social justice concerns must be a priority.

This exciting and ambitious programme will capture and share diverse knowledge and experience:

• building partnerships with southern organisations, networks and activists;
• stimulating wider dialogue between ‘unusual suspects’
• and developing innovative resources on gender and social movements for a broad audience.

The centrepiece of the programme will be the collaborative development and wide dissemination of a much needed BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and Social Movements.

The pack will be developed within a wider programme that engages a diverse range of experts and stakeholders. We will facilitate a collaborative and engaged process, using a range of activities including online discussions, inter-movement dialogues and network building.