Minds of the Movement

An ICNC blog on the people and power of civil resistance

Mariam Azeem

Mariam Azeem is Director of Movement Support and Learning at Rhize. She brings more than a decade’s experience and expertise in the field of adult education, training and coaching for nonviolent civil resistance, human rights, women leadership and movement building. She works with youth, women, gender and sexual minorities to support and amplify their narratives of human rights and justice. Azeem is a civil resistance trainer and her coaching work focuses on nonviolent conflict and creating participatory citizenship and accountable democracy.

Writings from Mariam Azeem

Articles

Ideas & Trends

From Grievance to Funding to Capacity Building: Insights from Movement Coaches

One movement coach I interviewed traced the ideal path from grievance to funding to capacity building. Although many readers will already be in the thick of organizing and fundraising, I thought it would still be helpful to share this model as a way to ground our thinking around movement capacity building. In a perfect world, a group would navigate the following steps: 1) Make a grievance known in your community to help form a critical mass of participants (this can be as few as 5 or 10 people). Take necessary security measures. […]

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Ideas & Trends

Recruiting Movement Trainers and Developing Training Content

Last year, I read Hardy Merriman’s blog posts about civil resistance training and activists’ common questions about training, and so much rang true to me. I am a fan of learning theories around movement support work and in-field tools and practices used by coaches and activists. Hardy’s posts inspired me to gather in-field experiences of movement coaches and share them with larger audiences. I asked the coaches: How do we find trainers and resource persons? And, how do we decide what kind of content the training participants will need? […]

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Movement Commentary

The Aurat March and Pakistan’s Struggle for Women’s Rights

Women’s rights have been on the social agenda in Pakistan for years, but the media largely ignored it until recently. Journalists have become more independent over the past few years, coinciding with the emergence of the Women’s March in the United States and around the world. These marches inspired Pakistani women to finally take action for their rights. Pakistan’s Aurat March (“aurat” means “women” in Urdu) saw its debut on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2018. […]

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Movement Commentary

Part Two: A Civil Resistance Trainer’s Story, and Takeaways for Educators

In my previous blog post, I shared with you my personal journey to becoming a civil resistance trainer and outlined a few takeaways about effective training approaches. In this post, I expand on those takeaways, which I hope civil resistance trainers in other parts of the world can use to improve their work. […]

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Interviews & People

A Civil Resistance Trainer’s Story, and Takeaways for Educators (Part 1)

Over the past few years, I have been working as a civil resistance trainer and educator in various parts of Pakistan including Azad and Jammu Kashmir. At times, my work to spread knowledge about civil resistance for human rights, peace, and democracy has brought me to cross red lines drawn by patriarchal principles in Pakistani society (and so many other places in the world). […]

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