Civic Space Reimagined Workshop 3: “How do we keep on keeping on?”

We are looking for activists and advocates in the region working on, looking into, and interested about mental health, resilience, and well-being. We want to open up a space where civil society activists and rights defenders may start a conversation addressing our mental health concerns and exploring the possibilities of developing and promoting frameworks and mechanisms that prepare and equip us better for our reimagined post-COVID future.

COVID-19 has compounded a toll on activists’ mental health, especially when health protocols are being used to mask repression and the silencing of dissent. “How do we keep on keeping on?”: Mental Health and Resilience of Activists in the Post-COVID Future reveals how COVID-19’s suddenness, its lockdowns and movement restrictions, physical distancing, and the attendant loss we suffered and had to endure alone, demand a deeper appreciation of the sense of holistic security we now need to regain, repair, and renew. Democracy activists, rights defenders, and freedom and equality advocates require time and space to take better care of ourselves in order to keep taking good care of our own, our colleagues, and our communities.

Join us in this process, and together let’s reimagine inclusive, safe, sustainable, just, fair, and community-driven ways forward.

Leow Yangfa, a registered social worker and Executive Director of Singapore-based counseling and support service Oogachaga, will provide input to our conversations about mental health, resilience, coping mechanisms, well-being, community-building, and our reimagined ways forward. Lee Su-Feh and JK Anicoche, our two dynamic artists-teachers will join us again and help facilitate the workshop.

REGISTER TODAY and we hope to see you on 10 May 2021, 8:00am-1:00pm Bangkok time: https://docs.google.com/…/1FAIpQLSc2q0Icubon1u…/viewform

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Innovation for Change – East Asia’s workshop series, Civic Space Reimagined, looks at how the pandemic revealed threats to our security and offers an attempt to rethink, reimagine, and rebuild our capacities and capabilities as we evolve into a more rights-respecting, rights-practicing, and rights-promoting civil society sector the post-COVID world requires and desperately needs. This dreaming + doing project aims to bring together the dream weavers, believers, doers, movers, disruptors, creators, change-makers, and innovators who are now ready to plant the seeds of the dream we want to breathe into lived reality in our next ‘new normal’. The series of three reimagining and co-creation workshops focuses on our ability to dream, the power of imagination, and the principles of co-sensing, co-creation, and co-design as we envision what’s next and build on what’s possible.

We hope to reimagine our civic space by looking through the eyes of three critical but often unseen sectors of civil society: those who work in culture, food, and mental health. Many advocates are emerging from these fields, and activists are often found working alongside them to champion human rights. These workshops aim to gather them to dream together of the ways we might make a better ecosystem for us in which to advocate. Together, we ask ourselves: What is our vision for the future of civic space in the region? What needs to change? What do we need in order to make those changes?

Limited slots for Workshop 3 are open. We request that you signify your interest and availability to participate as soon as possible. The registration process includes a short survey form that we hope you accomplish. The information you provide will help the team select participants and will help our facilitators and resource persons prepare for the workshop.