Partnership Announcement: JendaGbeni Comms Hub & Future Narratives Lab

Future Narratives Lab is delighted to announce a new partnership with JendaGbeni Comms Hub to assist the development of both organisations, and engage in mutual learning and support.

JendaGbeni Comms Hub is led by Karim Bah, a long-term social justice activist from Sierra Leone, who established the organisation to support social justice organisations in Africa. Karim has extensive experience working with grassroots campaigns and social movements across Africa such as Africans Rising, as well as for large international NGOs such as ActionAid, Oxfam and World Vision. Karim has also worked with or supported UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNDP, FAO WFP and UNCDF, and with global media outlets including AlJazeera and The Guardian.

“I founded JendaGbeni after experiencing how African social justice movements work is often hampered by the lack of effective strategic communications in general and narrative strategy in particular” says Karim, “In order to win concrete social change victories, these are areas where we urgently need to improvement, and I am delighted that we will be working with Future Narratives Lab on this aim.”

Future Narratives Lab is a non-profit research initiative based in the United Kingdom that works with campaigns and coalitions tackling complex social issues to help them overcome narrative barriers, and develop and test more effective strategies and approaches. Recent projects include developing and testing messaging about Transition Mineral Mining, and the Reframing Food Futures workshop on Climate & Agriculture in Ireland.

Daniel Stanley, Executive Director of Future Narratives Lab, said “We are excited to be working with JendaGbeni as they expand their important work and build on their experience working with social movements in Africa. There will be lots for us to learn, and we hope we can also share some helpful lessons from our work, identify opportunities for collaborative projects, and strengthen this important organisation as it develops.”

The collaboration will focus on:

• Capacity building and organisational development for JendaGbeni as it establishes its formal presence and overall governance
• Undertaking joint research work on key narrative change work needed on climate change/justice, economic justice/economic sovereignty and the global call for a new economy, and how this differs across geographies
• Training of communicators, strategists and social justice leaders in effective messaging, storytelling, framing and re-framing
• Developing the field of strategic communications, narrative strategy and strategic storytelling on the African continent to help African civil society and social movements win concrete policy changes

While the aim is to work with a broad section of social justice organisations, the priority will be the climate justice movement, the new economy, economic justice and economic sovereignty movements taking shape in Africa.

There are also plans to relocate the Comms Hub to Ghana to provide a basis for reaching out to the wider African civil society ecosystem.