Building Social Justice Capacity in Global Health and Development NGOs

This session presents the results of a 12-year ongoing consultancy and mentorship with a large, international non-profit organization focused on community-based health and development and children's rights. Through this collaboration, the co-presenters have bridged academia, activist experience, and practice in building and maintaining both a high level of education and proactive action capacity among a large, regionally dispersed, and young staff of 300 in over 35 countries. The co-presenters have developed an innovative model for providing ongoing human rights- based education for staff on the global political economy. Utilizing distance learning technologies, action planning curricula, management trainings, and campaign development modules, as well as in-person consultation and distance support, this model ensures that social justice and activist learning infuse all aspects of the organization's work. Public health, sociology, and critical thinking about neo-liberal economic globalization through the lens of political economic analyses inform in-depth learning modules which, in turn, inform campaign development and holistic health models that consider culture, community and history. The co-presenters have worked with staff and management in developing thoughtful people-centered development projects and curriculum as a counter-reaction to the forces of globalization and mainstream development models. This presentation will consider the potential for expanding such a model to ensure broad-based understandings of social justice within global health and development NGOs.