Economics and Governance Curriculum

Nina Gregg, Susan Williams, December 2016

The Economics and Governance Curriculum is a multi-year collaboration led by the Highlander Research and Education Center, with support from fellows (partners) from eleven national and regional organizations. Together they are creating a 16+ module curriculum for community groups to assess community assets; analyze resources and capacity; identify decision-makers; develop new alliances, organizations and enterprises; and take action to address community needs through responsible and sustainable practices. The curriculum provides a structured process through which participants develop skills in research, analysis and collaboration, learn about their communities and about systems that are larger than their own community, and identify action steps to make transitions in their organizations and enterprises. The process includes a range of approaches from individual to global ways of analyzing communities. The design of the curriculum promotes co-responsibility by building collective ways of working that enable more people to work together effectively.

Highlander is a world-renowned popular education center that since 1932 has supported education and organizing of social movements in the southern and Appalachian United States, and at different times has had partnerships with networks and institutes in India, Mexico, and Central and South America. Highlander offers workshops and hosts meetings at its residential workshop center and elsewhere, develops curriculum and networks to further social movement strategies, and builds relationships between groups in the region with national and international partners. Highlander has developed curricula on community development, globalization, language justice, popular education methodologies, and democracy. The Economics and Governance curriculum integrates and builds upon these earlier efforts.

In 2015, the Project Leaders and Fellows are creating the curriculum, developing case studies, identifying pilot (trial) communities, and convening a session to train trainers to use the curriculum.

In 2016 Project Leaders and partners will trial the curriculum in selected communities, revise the curriculum in response to participant and facilitator evaluation, and disseminate the curriculum through a low-cost download.

Downloads: nina-_proposal.pdf (310 KiB)