Builds the leadership skills, base-building capacity, political clarity, and organizing effectiveness of directors/lead organizers and their organizations.
Activities include:
• 4-Training Retreats (featuring individual and collective transformative practice; political education; shared agenda-setting and development of shared narratives on core issues)
• Mentoring/coaching and technical assistance
• Monthly readings, case studies and conference calls
• Webinars supporting course content
• Bodywork and somatic coaching
• Evaluation and documentation
Increases the effectiveness of frontline organizers and deepens their skills in movement building, campaign management, political education, and transformative leadership.
The program is organized into two phases:
• 4-day intensive training: New organizers learn foundational organizing skills; learn and develop practices for self-awareness and transformative leadership; and political education. Organizers will leave each retreat with assignments and clear benchmarks for on- the ground practice.
• 1 week organizing campaign: Organizers, recruited from the training above, will each work together in their assigned city, at a BOLD alumni organization, on a specific issue-based campaign to implement their new skills and receive continued embodied leadership and political education training.
Practice groups are where the work takes root. Organizers come together to apply embodied leadership in real time, share what they are learning, and sustain one another through the ongoing work of transformation.
Every other year, BOLD convenes a National Gathering — bringing together participants, trainers, and mentors to plan, evaluate, and deepen the collective practice that holds our community together.
In the years between National Gatherings, BOLD communities come together regionally — rooting the work in local context while staying connected to the larger movement we are building together.
BOLD’s offerings are not a menu of isolated programs. They are a coordinated ecosystem of practice, study, and community — each one designed to deepen the embodied leadership that sustains organizers across a lifetime of work.
Practice groups keep the work alive week to week. 30 Days of Practice deepens individual commitment. Black August calls alumni into seasonal resistance. Mbongi gathers the nation at year’s end. National and Regional Gatherings bring the full community together across years. And the Mawón Center holds all of it — on land that belongs to the movement.
Our offers are a living rhythm of practice, community, and collective struggle that sustains leaders not just through a training, but across a lifetime.
