About JASS
Just Associates (JASS) is a network of justice activists, scholars and popular educators in 13 countries worldwide committed to increasing women’s voice, visibility and collective organizational power to advance a more just, equitable and sustainable world. We are known for our pioneering advocacy and human rights training, strategies, action research and accessible how-to materials. JASS programs aim to expand grassroots empowerment and public engagement; strengthen activists’ and organizations’ political and strategic capacities; build bridges and alliances across boundaries of power and privilege shaped by class, gender, race, age, location, sexuality and other factors; and communicate fresh knowledge about the messy and inspiring realities of social change. Regionally-based JASS teams draw upon 20 years of experience with social justice organizations and movements in dozens of countries. Our approach is forged from our network’s tried-and-tested activism, web of local-to-global partnerships and the opportunities for connection created by evolving global communications technologies.
Our program strategy for 2006-2008 centers around our Movement-Building Initiative, currently in progress in MesoAmerica, South East Asia, and Southern Africa. For more information about our movement-building innitiative, click here.
BACKGROUND and HISTORY: ABOUT JUST ASSOCIATES
JASS formed in 2002 as a response to two key events, building on a long history of social justice experiences among our community. In late 2001, some of the key people behind JASS’ founding were instrumental in an international meeting of 50 activists and academics from around the world, called Making Change Happen. The aim of this workshop was to explore the shifting dynamics of global power and their impact on human rights strategies, and social change efforts worldwide. Our conversations raised concerns about depoliticization and fragmentation within advocacy efforts. The collective analysis and sense of urgency around the need for alternative thinking and strategies were inspiring. At the same time, JASS co-founders were poised to publish their book, A New Weave of Power, People & Politics: The Action Guide for Advocacy and Citizen Participation. A New Weave was itself the culmination of decades of experience and collaborations with scores of groups around the world who contributed to the final product, while at the same time using its various draft forms to strengthen and refine their own rights-based development and social change strategies. As drafts of the book were released and used, it became clear that there was tremendous need and demand for a transregional community of trainers, activists and scholars who could work in a flexible, agile way, providing training, strategic accompaniment and support to groups engaged in a range of advocacy and social change efforts worldwide. The momentum and relationships generated through the process of producing A New Weave continue to feed into the growing process of learning and action that JASS cultivates. Much of the knowledge generated by that work is captured in the Making Change Happen series.
Our multidisciplinary community draws upon experienced community organizers, popular educators, advocates and scholars in 13 countries, many of whom have worked together on social justice, development and human rights in different ways over decades. We come together – energized by the potential of meaningful local to global communications for expanding the learning, effectiveness and collective impact of people-centered social change strategies, and troubled by the widespread weakening and co-optation of social justice efforts and movements by fast-changing global dynamics, agendas and institutions. Who We Are
Since we were founded, JASS has worked with nearly 40 partners in 26 countries through a range of projects. JASS nurtures emerging leadership by creating fresh spaces for rethinking and rebuilding strategies that draw on a fusion of political methodologies and ideas centered on power and movement, and on bridging agendas, organizational boundaries and borders. Through alternative organizing, leadership development, popular education, advocacy capacity-building, long-term strategic “accompaniment,” skills training, production of materials for activists and processes that tap the very best of the human spirit, JASS works to build collective capacity to solve problems and realize a just, equitable and sustainable “common good.”
In October 2005, the entire JASS network came together for the first time in Bangkok to refine our mission and strategic priorities, as well as to consolidate our organizational systems and decisionmaking. The new thinking and energy unleashed by that exciting meeting continued to evolve through virtual planning and priority-setting, culminating in the decision in September of 2006 to focus our efforts exclusively on strengthening the leadership and organizational capacity of women within women’s movements and within and in alliance with other social movements.
JASS VISION AND MISSION
Vision: Just Associates is guided by a vision of participatory, inclusive and empowering democracy as both an end in itself and as a means to address the systemic inequalities that generate and perpetuate poverty, oppression, violence and environmental destruction worldwide. For us, this demands changing dominant norms and values that perpetuate discrimination and privilege, as well as reforming and transforming paradigms, institutions, policies and decision-making processes in both public and private spaces of power.
Mission: We believe that such transformation is achieved by building and using the collective power of people, which is a long-term process of forging relationships between individuals, communities and organizations through dialogue, analysis, planning and action. Our efforts seek to deepen, diversify and expand public engagement while refining and strengthening visions, strategies, leaders and organizations. At the same time, we believe that empowerment is about tapping the best of the human spirit by unleashing the capacity to imagine a better future while developing a critical consciousness of caring, solidarity, respect and fairness. In this way, we seek to build movements that celebrate and negotiate differences among people and organizations from the very local to the global level. We believe the crucial starting point for transformation is by strengthening and building movements of people and communities that are marginalized and subordinated by the current arrangements due to their gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, age and location.
