Bench Marks Activists Training Course
Local community groups in Mpumalanga, Limpopo, Rustenburg and Soweto with the Bench Marks Foundation kicked off the 2019 edition of the Activists Training Course.
Over 40 activists in communities living near mines will meet in workshops over 4 months working on action projects.
For more details on this course see: https://communitymonitors.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/FinalParticipants-Workbook-Workshop-1.pdf
The Community Monitors Programme
The Activists training course is a development in the near 10-year-old Bench Marks Community Monitors programme see the work of this programme on https://communitymonitors.net
2017 course
In 2017, the programme went deeper, exploring more intensives methods of activists documentation of events in their communities. Seven activists from mining communities explored how to move from simple reports on community problems to developing the skill of “investigators” This experience was documented in a booklet “ Organising communities , Engaging Mining Companies”
See the writings of activists here:
https://communitymonitors.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2017.pdf
The 2018 Course
The 2018 programme this training exercise to include 19 activists in 2019. In this edition of the course , the focus was on the skills of investigation for action. This activity spread over 3 months. The activists each investigated a problem and wrote a report. The full report is available here:
The 2019 course
In 2019, A Bench Marks Team, together with a group of local activists designed a course to respond to new challenges: how can local activists run their own course with support from Bench Marks educators, how can this training course result in innovative and clever action to bring about change.
The design of this new course is being implemented in 4 provinces in South Africa Mpumalanga ( eMalahhleni) , Limpopo ( Sekhukhune) Northwest/Rustenburg and Gauteng ( Soweto)
See the design of 2019 Bench Marks Community Activists Training course and materials for the first block here:
https://communitymonitors.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/FinalParticipants-Workbook-Workshop-1.pdf
