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Build cross-movement networks

” Women have power within themselves, but alone, we canā€™t make big changes. We can come together to do something great.ā€

ā€“ Dorica Maguba, Our Bodies, Our Lives Campaign, Malawi

JASS builds and fortifies cross movement alliances and links

As a movement building support organization, JASS knows that the capacity to make change grows with power of numbers and the aggregated clout leveraged through alliances. For this reason, we place enormous importance on fostering collaborative relationships, trust and organizational capacities which are the foundation of collective power.

We catalyze, support, and sustain a range of cross-movement networks and alliances (many of whose members had no previous history of working together) at local to global levels. These collaborations both enhance womenā€™s political impact and offer solidarity and increased safety for the women involved. These alliances range from women organizing nationally and locally across ethnicity, religion, or sexual identity, to cross-border and global linkages that challenge neo-liberal policies, gender discrimination and extractive economics.

Alliances matter becauseā€¦

One of the critical ingredients in transformative power is power with, the power of people united in common purpose and acting together to create change. That is what an alliance is ā€“ a structure, formal or informal ā€“ which enables people and organizations to achieve more than they could alone. They are by their nature non-homogenous, an agreed-upon collaborative relationship based on common ground. The diversity within alliances is both their source of power ā€“ the solidarity among groups ā€“ but also a source of potential vulnerability, as those differences can be exploited for ā€œdivide and conquerā€ tactics. Powerful interests can too easily sow distrust and conflict within movements and thus weaken and silence them. JASS works to forge cross-movement understanding and solidarity among disparate leaders and organizations to help fend off these kinds of attacks and sustain unity and mutual commitment.

Learn more about the alliances that JASS has co-created in, What Collective Power Looks Like.

Check out the We Rise tools about creating strong alliances.

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