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The Collection is the result of a noted feminist historian urging elmira Nazombe, Mariama Williams, Carol Barton, and Pamela Sparr to donate their writings and materials documenting their contributions to progressive feminist organizing in the US and internationally over the past 40+ years. The Collection will showcase the depth and breadth of their cutting-edge intersectional popular education, organizing, and policy advocacy on a wide range of topics - from the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s - to today's struggles around immigrant rights and climate justice, to name just a few arenas. This collection is unusual because it is not simply one woman's story, but also offers insights into their evolving friendships and political collaborations. Over time, the Collection will be adding physical materials and documentation of other progressive feminist activists from the US and internationally.
The Popular Education Hub
Two important historical developments inspired the Hub. One is liberatory pedagogies first used in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa to organize low-income workers, women, and peasants in the second half of the 20th century which eventually spread across the rest of the globe, including the US. Another inspiration is efforts to help the average person understand the underlying dynamics of the US and global economies -- a movement that was launched in part by faculty and students at UMass-Amherst in the 1970s.
Active in both of these organizing and educational streams of work for the past 40 years, this team has developed an impressive array of tools, techniques, and experiences as the result of addressing a wide range of situations and audiences -- from a Black women's lending circle in Brooklyn to a tri-national coalition wanting to influence US trade policy, to Egyptian trade unionists grappling with the privatization of state-owned industries, to faith-based women wanting to address environmental health horror stories, to offer just a few examples.
The Hub is being launched at the request of several key constituencies:
* Activists who want to learn these powerful organizing methodologies and get support in applying them to their own work today
* Popular education groups and facilitators who want to increase their reach and exposure
* A national network of more than 2,000 economics instructors who would like more relevant and engaging curricula and tools to bring current economic and social issues and policies to life in their classes.
* Organizers and educators who want to have a trusted, permanent, inter-active space to document pop-ed case studies, share tools, and foster collaboration.
Priority uses for early donations include: constructing a fully interactive, multi-lingual Hub website including digitization of materials; outreach for and design of some on-campus programming for faculty and students; as well as administrative support for outreach and programming.
Longer-term uses of funding will include: designing and hosting learning labs; webinar and video projects; developing new curricula and tools, including exploring possible uses of new technologies, to support various movements; and staffing expenses to maintain and grow the Hub.
Please make your gift today by clicking the Give Now button above or make your gift by mail by following the instructions below:
Make your check payable to the UMass Amherst Foundation, Inc., write "Popular Education Operations Fund" or "Popular Education Endowment Fund" in the memo line, and send to:
UMass Amherst Foundation
Records and Gift Processing
134 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003-9270
You can also download and complete this form to transfer funds via wire or ACH.