

JUST POWER: A Guide for
Activists and Changemakers
Welcome to JUST POWER: A Guide for Activists and Changemakers—a vital resource designed to support activists, organizations, and movements in navigating – and transforming – the challenging contexts of today’s world. Rooted in JASS’s decades of movement experience, this guide offers cutting-edge ideas, practical tools, and strategic frameworks to strengthen and inspire your social justice work.
Why This Guide?
The JUST POWER Guide is a response to the increasingly challenging contexts we face today—rising authoritarianism, climate instability, and economic precarity, among others. This guide provides activists and their allies with the knowledge and resources needed to navigate and build power, build solidarity, and craft effective strategies for long-term change.
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Here’s how to find your way around JUST POWER—the guide for activists and change-makers.
More about JUST POWER
View the launch of the JUST POWER Guide. This event featured discussions with the creators of the Guide, practical insights, and an introduction into the guide’s key themes and applied tools. Learn how to use this powerful resource to drive meaningful, lasting change.
Listen to the JASS JUST POWER playlist.
Read JUST POWER: A Guide for Activists and Changemakers. Start exploring the guide and its resources to enhance your activism and drive transformative change.
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PANELISTS
Zeph is JASS’ Southeast Asia Regional Director. She is a Filipina human-rights and environmental/climate justice activist, feminist, communicator, strategist, and political popular educator working with diverse networks in Southeast Asia, particularly rural and indigenous women and LGBTQ community in defense of land, water, territories, and rights.
Orfe is a feminist, with a degree in philosophy and over 30 years of experience working with women’s organizations, networks, and government institutions developing collective initiatives primarily to strengthen women’s political participation, the right to a life free of violence, sexual and reproductive rights and the protection of defenders from a critical and progressive perspective.
Orfe recently transitioned into the role of Regional Director for JASS Mesoamerica.
Orfe continues to lead the strategy of JASS in the region and is a representative in the Mesoamerican Defenders Initiative.
Jethro Pettit is a facilitator and researcher working on power and transformative change in communities, organizations and systems. He designs and leads learning journeys and workshops related to social justice, sustainability, climate change, conflict and human rights. Jethro has worked with international NGOs and social movements, and is an emeritus fellow of the Institute of Development Studies. jethropettit.com
For over 30 years, Lisa VeneKlasen has been an activist, educator, strategist and organization-builder with a variety of social justice and women’s rights efforts worldwide. Trained as a community organizer and popular educator, Lisa is JASS’ founding member, and is an advisor to the Nobel Women’s Initiative.
James Savage leads the Fund for Global Human Rights’ program on the Enabling Environment for Human Rights Defenders (HRDs). Through grant-making, technical assistance, documentation and learning, and advocacy the program supports HRDs globally to protect and promote civic space and the right to defend human rights, most especially at the national and local level. James has worked with HRDs and civic space issues since the early 1990s through a variety of roles at Peace Brigades International and Amnesty International UK where he worked for seventeen years prior to joining the Fund in 2016.
Shereen is a Zimbabwean feminist, activist, popular educator, academic and JASS Executive Director since 2020. Shereen’s work is grounded in her engagement with women in trade unions, social movements, and community-based organizations. Shereen has published widely on feminism, women’s movements, and social movement organizing in journals in South Africa and internationally.
Vivienne Mentor-Lalu is a feminist activist committed to defending and advancing womxn’s rights and social justice. She has experience as a facilitator grounded in popular education and supporting the work of collectives, coalitions and collaborations. Her work and activism have taken place in South Africa and the USA.
George works with the East Africa Human Rights Initiative (UHAI EASHRI) as the Capacity Support lead. He is responsible for coordinating and overseeing the capacity support programme strategies by ensuring that they respond to the priorities of LGBTIQ and sex worker collectives and movements. Mwai’s politics are heavily influenced by Paulo Frere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, queer and feminist theories of liberation that have shaped his world view and work.