We are Olutosin Ruth Oladosu Adebowale, Maria Latumahina, and Dan Glass and together we have thirty years of Training for Transformation (TFT) experience since we were lucky enough to do the diploma training. We were honoured to be the guest speakers at the Closing Ceremony TFT Diploma 2022.
Key Concepts that inform our movements for transformation.
Civil rights – Political and social equality; and freedom of citizens to demand and obtain what they feel they are entitled to.
Psychological Approach to Anti-Colonialism – Linking Colonialism with social psychology, TFT believes that change begins with “me”.
Justice – Moral rightness which exists within the parameters of ‘rights’ but also moves beyond. Justice is based on what is instinctively fair and just for everyone on their own terms.
Love –“Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust” writes bell hooks. There can be no love without justice.
Acceptance – To add to this perspective on love here we can learn from Rev. Angel Kyodo “Love is space. It is developing our own capacity for spaciousness within ourselves to allow others to be as they are. That is love. And that doesn’t mean that we don’t have hopes or wishes that things are changed or shifted, but that to come from a place of love is to be in acceptance of what is, even in the face of moving it towards something that is more whole, more just, more spacious for all of us.”
Curiosity – Asking questions cultivates curiosity and curiosity changes the world. Curiosity can help us understand why something is the way it is, as well as help us imagine how it could be different. We can do this every day. Let us start with ‘why don’t they teach this in schools?’
Education – The root of education is ‘educere’ which literally means ‘to lead forth.’
Education that cultivates curiosity involves a constant unveiling of reality, the emergence of consciousness, and critical intervention in reality. This is education as the practice of freedom rather than the practice of domination.’ Paulo Freire.
Intersectionality – The understanding of, and struggle against racial, gender, sexual, class, and all oppressive structures that are interlocking. The concept of intersectionality is rooted in Black Women’s intellectual analysis and grassroots organising who pioneered the understanding that we need to destroy all systems of oppression to liberate all people. As far back as American abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech “Ain’t I a Woman?,” to the 1970s Combahee River Collective, an organisation of Black feminist lesbian socialists, intersectionality continues today to be a vital framework to track and unpack the multiple aspects of individual and collective identity that either oppresses or free us all.
Liberation – Breaking the chains of physical, psychological, and spiritual imprisonment.
Collective Liberation – The phenomenal civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer noted that “nobody’s free until everybody’s free.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. crystallises this further – “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.”
Critical consciousness – The ability to be critically aware of the current reality in order to change it. Consciousness is the first step, action is the next. Consciousness leads to action but sometimes we are unable to act. However, once we’re conscious we’re more able to know what we’d like to do to change things. When we remedy this, our consciousness becomes critical.
Transformation – How digging at the roots of our existence can move us from a naive existence to questioning our reality to liberating ourselves and our communities to transforming our world.
Hope – An emotion and state of mind that we can cultivate to take action in the belief that things can change. Hope brings courage.
Collaboration – Meaningful social change is brought about through the practice of collaborative leadership, involving creating strong, connected communities
collaborating to reduce suffering and increase vitality.
Creativity – The act of inventing, imagining, and visualizing using tools such as art, music, and revolutionary protest – to change the world.
“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill, of things unknown, but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill, for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
I know why the caged bird sings, Maya Angelou
Resources – Training for Transformation www.tftinpractice.org / Paulo Freire – ‘The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’
TFT has been a formidable life force in our varied programmes for community transformation – from feminist food sovereignty programmes in Nigeria to environmental justice and anti-colonial empowerment trainings in West Papua and to HIV / AIDS healthcare liberation movements in the UK. We hope this continues to inform and inspire. Thank you so much to our TFT family – A Luta Continua! 🙂
Olutosin is the founder of Star of Hope Transformation Center in Nigeria. She has worked with women and girls for more than 10 years using trash to create beautiful products that they sell to sustain projects. Presently Ruth and friends, operate a food bank for indigent women in Ondo State and Ibasa in Lagos, a Sisters City, and Free Farm for women in Owo. So far, all products and services are free. The food banks have 2 trucks that deliver free foodstuffs to women and have delivered more than 10,000 foodstuffs in less than a decade. There are skill acquisition programmes, and it is free training for women. Ruth often uses Facebook to generate support and gets a lot of help from friends. “I believe that we can bring change and have paradise on earth if we are ready to create a better world.”
Maria has been actively advocating for socio-economic environmental justice for more than twenty years. Since her TFT graduation, her emphasis has been on liberation from psychological colonisation blending psychoanalysis with critical conscientisation. She set up TFT Papua in 2019 (https://papuatransformation.org/). TFT Papua brought together local/ grassroots community activists whose purpose in life is to amplify the work of social justice across the region and liberate humanity.
Dan is an ‘Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) healthcare and human rights activist, performer, presenter and writer. Dan has been recognised as Attitude Magazine’s ‘campaigning role models for LGBTQI youth’, a Guardian ‘UK youth climate leader’, 2017 ‘Activist of the Year’ with the ‘Sexual Freedom Awards‘ and was announced a ‘BBC Greater Londoner’ in 2019 for founding ‘Queer Tours of London – A Mince Through Time.’ Dan is an artist with the global In Place of War artist network and a facilitator for TFT. Dan recently presented ‘Never Again–Fighting the Polish far-right’, Censoring Palestine: The Weaponisation Of Anti-Semitism and the Coronavirus cabaret: the online show combating social isolation his book United Queerdom: From the Legends of the Gay Liberation Front to the Queers of Tomorrow was recognised as Observer book of the week June 2020. Contact dan at www.theglassishalffull.co.uk and at alright @theglassishalffull.co.uk.
