Movement Building
Supporting social movements for collective action and mutual accountability
Root Change helps advance formal and informal movements by cultivating linkages between grassroots and grass-top actors, strengthening ties among coalition partners, promoting collective action, and developing strong mechanisms for mutual accountability.
Stories & Insights
Trust Capital: What Two Years of Participatory Action Research Taught Us About Economic Development
What WiLEAD’s First Year Taught Us About Environmental Action as Democratic Practice
The Future of Facilitation: Combining Human Connection with Smart Technology
Telling the Stories Behind Social Change
Movement Building in Practice
We believe that social movement success rests upon three capacities: the ability to mobilize and maintain the engagement of supporters, the ability to forge connections to adjacent social movements, and the ability to align a movement’s internal workings with its goals and agenda. Strong movements are adept at scanning the environment, nurturing connections to diverse actors, building trust, creating partnerships, strategizing, and taking actions that advance their aims. These skill sets enable movements to expand their voice and exercise power by engaging with powerholders and promoting politically viable solutions.
We support movement building through network and value chain analysis, interactive convenings to deepen trust and collaborative ties, assessment and evaluation work, cultivation of trusted messengers and skills-building workshops. We also support the development of robust messaging to mobilize, inspire, and advance movement aims.