A new initiative
Through partnerships and funding, “Accessible Coaching for Social Justice” is an initiative seeking to provide accessible or free Transformational Coaching to early or mid-career human rights defenders and activists. The priority of this initiative is for those that are currently based in Berlin, Germany, but it also extends to people internationally.
The coaching is to be tailored to their unique challenges. This means working with critical, decolonial, antiracist and feminist perspectives, and a personal understanding and experience on behalf of the coach of the human rights and non-profit sectors.
“Accessible Coaching for Social Justice” has been selected as one of the six ‘Coaching for Social Impact’ projects of the Animas Impact Incubator started in 2022 by Animas Centre for Coaching, one of the UK’s leading coaching insitutions. The yearlong international program is designed to support – via coaching – the six Incubator Project Leader to launch their social impact projects to make a difference in an area they strongly care for.
To achieve social justice, the next generation of human rights defenders and activists have to be resilient to carry out a uniquely challenging work. Through a practice of Transformational Coaching specifically tailored to them, they would get the mental space to explore their challenges, build on their strengths, and expand their perspectives in pragmatic ways. Which in turn will have them better equipped to pursue personal and professional objectives and impact their ability to fight for the causes they defend, without sacrificing themselves.
This initiative is to start in Berlin, Germany, a city with a diverse, international, and growing non-profit and social sector.
For whom and for what specific challenges?
While indispensable to creating change in societies, young human rights defenders and activists – whether early career organizers, lawyers, artists, journalists, or environmentalists – face phenomenal challenges and have little access to personal coaching.
They can be faced with male-dominated, racialized, elitist working fields or settings. They are likely to experience discrimination from dominant groups in society, notably because of the causes they defend, the critical stances they take, or their identities.
They can become so aligned with what they view as their life’s mission that personal and professional boundaries may be blurred. They might have to cope with the traumatic experiences of their clients or communities, and sometimes their own. Career perspectives are usually precarious, while also highly competitive. Burnout and conflicts commonplace. Confidence in the early career may be undermined by impostor syndrome, anxiety or guilt.
A politically-conscious coaching
As coaching has long been a companion of the corporate world, it has put off many in the social sector.
But in the recent years, it became clear that coaching has a lot to offer to social change. The emancipation and resilience of individuals does impact their ability to bring about change to larger communities.
This initiative seeks to practice a politically-conscious, critical form of coaching. It means acknowledging and working with the impacts of power, privilege and structural oppression that people may be faced with or have internalized – read more on this political vision in “How I coach“.
The gap in the non-profit sector
Since coaching entered the non-profit sector, it either focuses on organizational and team development or on management and leadership skills. While the latter can include individual coaching, it is for those already in senior positions. And in all these scenarios, the coaching is closely linked to the workplace’s needs.
In contrast, this initiative is looking at providing personal coaching to younger actors, to make it financially free or accessible for them, and have it be separate from their workplace’s expectations.
What impacts are we looking for?
To work through Transformational Coaching on the unique challenges that human rights defenders and activists are facing can provide them with new forms of emancipation, stress and conflict management skills, greater agency and resilience. It can help them identify and understand their personal boundaries and potential.
“Accessible Coaching for Social Justice” is supporting not just these young individuals that are the social justice multipliers of tomorrow, but ultimately the causes they defend.