Coaching Campaigns
We accompany and coach constituency groups to lead and organize collective action for the change they seek towards freedom, justice, and equality.
In the past ten years, we have accompanied 25 social and political change campaigns that achieved successes in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria.
We accompany and coach grassroots campaigns in the Arab world to enhance their success in building people power, collaborative leadership and specific change. Our methodology is based and evolved from the value based organizing approach that we learned from Marshall Ganz who is a lecturer at Harvard University and a long time organizer. Over the past ten years, Ahel accompanied the leaders of nearly 32 organizing campaigns. These campaigns work on social, political and labour rights across the Arab world, specifically in Jordan, Palestine and Lebanon. Among them were campaigns that sought to protect political rights such as the “Prawer Will Not Pass” campaign in occupied Palestine, to prevent the passage of a law that would have led to the displacement of tens of thousands of Palestinian families in the Negev and the Refuse Campaigns to support Palestinian Druze refuse serving in the Israeli army.
Other campaigns coached sought to bring about legal change to labour laws such as Sadaqa for day care centers for working parents and Stand Up with the Teachers Campaign. Some focused on the rights of women such as “La Sharaf Fi Al Jreemah” campaign, which called for cancelling from the law the possibility of a family dropping its right to pursue a murderer if the crime occured within the family and the “La Tkabrouna, Lissatna Zghar” campaign to stop the marriage of underage girls in Bekaa Lebanon. Ibni, Bithimounna and Sar Waqtha are examples of campaigns we coached in Jordan for the rights of people with Disability. In addition to other campaigns that sought to bring about changes and developments in societal habits, such as the “6 Minutes for Reading” campaign and “Safe Homes” to prevent violence against children in 146 homes in the Jabal al-Nathif area in Amman, and, among many other campaigns.
We accompany and empower those who seek change (people of the cause) in three ways:
The leadership teams of campaigns are the ones who determine the goal and strategy of their campaign. They are the ones who make decisions on its flow, tactics and structure. Our role in Ahel is to accompany and empower the leadership teams during the journey and at different campaign milestones. We accompany them to ensure that they lead their campaign in a way that enhances the collective and participatory leadership and make decisions regarding its narrative, strategy, structure based on shared values and build the constituency’s power. We also support them with tools and techniques for organizing and mobilizing their community.
Sometimes, we do not accompany the campaign and walk beside it in its journey holding periodic coaching meetings with the team coordinators. Sometimes, we provide coaching interventions to a campaign based on its needs in that moment of time. For example, the campaign may need us to facilitate a conversation among them to revise the strategy or restructure the distributed teams. Sometimes they need us to work with them on a challenge in their culture or run an evaluation and reflection session. Sometimes, it’s to help them plan a tactic or a peak. They resort to us because they need a third party and because we facilitate an intervention based on the community organizing methodology and essence.
The Coaching Hour is open to anyone who is facing a challenge as they pursue change through collective action. One of our coaches will meet with you for an hour to discuss a challenge you are facing, whether it is strategic, structural or narrative related. The Coaching Hour is available for all campaigns and teams whether they are at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of their campaign journey. It is available to any change project in the Arab world whether they are following or aware of the community organizing approach or not.
Examples of coaching interventions that Ahel provides:
- Recruiting leaders for the founding team
- Coaching the core team to create its strategy through a Story, Strategy and Structure workshop.
- Coaching leaders to run a listening drive.
- Tactics training and coaching
- Coaching the campaign expansion in multiple leadership teams
- Training team coordinators on different topics (meeting facilitation, accountability, collective decision making, setting and revisiting norms, metrics and evaluation, setting team objectives and leadership roles.
- Facilitating sessions to set and revisit the collective culture
- Reflection, evaluation and restrategizing workshops
- Coaching campaigns on expansion tactics