Mission
Just Associates (JASS) is a global community of justice activists, scholars and popular educators in 25 countries worldwide. JASS is committed to strengthening women’s voice, visibility, and collective organizing power to create a just and sustainable world for all. JASS works from a feminist perspective to transform norms, institutions, policies and decision-making processes in both public and private spaces of power. Our shared analysis and strategies are shaped by an intersectional perspective on power integrating race, class, sexuality, location and other factors.
Core strategies and intentions:
Strengthen and diversify activist, feminist leadership through intergenerational political analysis, education and skill-building activities and trans-border learning and strategic action
Recognize and increase the impact of our strategies and practices of “crossing the line” by strengthening community organizing and popular education/communications linked to advocacy at all levels;
Build bridges, common agendas and flexible alliances between different regions, between rural and urban, grassroots efforts and policy strategies, scholarly activists and activist scholars, and women’s movements and women and men in other social movements.
Generate new feminist knowledge about movement-building by and for activists and their allies produced for multiple uses; and,
Develop and use multimedia communication skills and strategies to connect women and influence public opinion, and to make women’s transformative roles visible and feminism and gender equality appealing and relevant.
These activities are interwoven and mutually reinforcing in much of JASS’ work.
Our program strategy for 2006-2009 centers around our Movement-Building Initiative, currently in progress in MesoAmerica, South East Asia, and Southern Africa.
Founded in 2002 as a uniquely agile global network of respected human rights activists, community organizers, popular educators and scholars in 25 countries, JASS has become known for its pioneering social justice and women’s rights education, training, strategies, action-research and accessible how-to materials about political and social change. JASS carries out innovative programs that combine effective learning and action from the tried-and-tested activism of its network, a long history of strong partnerships, and the opportunities presented by evolving global communications. JASS functions as both an advocate in global arenas and a social justice innovator and strategist at local, national and regional levels.
In its initial years before focusing solely on women’s movement-building, JASS focused on research and capacity-building with and for international development NGOs, trade unions, and a variety of economic and social justice alliances to strengthen and integrate rights-based, citizen-centered advocacy approaches. This work and related partnerships were developed around three core programs:
- women’s rights and empowerment – aimed at helping women understand, build and use their collective power effectively;
- economic rights and citizen action - helping citizens understand and participate in defining their countries’ and communities’ economic priorities and holding public and private actors accountable in a context of globalization;
- local to global bridges for learning and Action - linking JASS allies from the Global South with their counterparts in the US, Canada and Europe to improve mutual understanding, solidarity and joint action on common global rights agendas
In late 2005, following a meeting of the JASS network to critically assess the gains and challenges of its first years, JASS decided to enhance and connect the ongoing local and national-level work of the majority of its members and focus exclusively on building women’s empowerment, leadership and organization. Among other changes, this decision brought with it a reduction in fee-for-service partnerships and the cultivation of new donor partners who share JASS’ concerns about fragmentation among social justice actors and the dominance depoliticized approaches to inequality and change, along with the commitment to revitalizing the political collective capacity of women to resist violence and advance human rights and democracy. In mid-2006, following further discussions within its network and with partners, JASS launched the movement-building initiative, “Imagining and rebuilding feminist movements for the future”. This initiative integrates the experience and approaches developed through the previous three distinct program areas and taps JASS’ particular strengths and accomplishments of the past years, including:
- Demonstrated capacity to serve as catalyst, bridge and “honest broker” between different, often conflicting, groups operating in different locations with distinct agendas, yet in pursuit of common visions;
- Useful, critical perspectives and alternatives to apolitical approaches to inequality, and innovative ideas, tools and methods for negotiating and building collective power;
- Reintegration of advocacy strategies with constituency-building through community organizing, popular education, communications and leadership work;
- Demystification of economic and budget policy and development of citizen-centered approaches to economic rights;
- Unique capacity for participatory action-research on cutting edge agendas (e.g. Where’s the Money for Women’s Rights? and Citizen Engagement and Global Economic Power) and knowledge generation about social change from practice with practitioners, including how-to tools and frameworks;
- Creative approaches to communications and media strategies that uniquely advance the aims of self-empowerment, public education and mobilization, linking and advocacy;
- The JASS community – diverse individuals grounded in and affiliated to important national and regional organizations around the world; known for their long history in women’s rights, democracy and participatory governance, and their leadership in popular education and grassroots empowerment linked to bold, systemic change strategies over the last fifteen to thirty years.
