Bringing the Movement Back to the Movement

What happens when the work becomes bigger than the movement that gave birth to it?

In this closing session, we’ll examine how organizations can drift from their movement roots—and how bureaucracy and institutional practices can unintentionally dilute community power and disconnect us from our purpose.

Together, we’ll explore what it means to bring our leadership back into alignment with survivors, communities, and the movements that shaped this work. We’ll also examine what matriarchal leadership looks like when navigating organizational pressure, complexity, and real-life decisions while remaining accountable to survivor-led, community-centered, and transformative approaches to ending domestic violence and sexual assault.

We will explore:

Identify where our work or leadership may have drifted from the movement roots and core purpose of the domestic violence and sexual assault fields.
Recognize how organizational structures, bureaucracy, and institutional practices can impact community power, survivor autonomy, and survivor-led approaches.
Explore practical ways to apply matriarchal leadership principles to real-life decision-making, organizational challenges, and leadership under pressure. Reconnect day-to-day work with the larger movements, values, and communities working to end domestic violence and sexual assault.
Identify concrete ways to move from values and intention into practice within teams and organizations while centering survivors, collective care, and community accountability.

This virtual training is provided for members and IDHS-funded DV/SA organizations only, and will issue 2 CEUs at no cost. For Social Work CEUs, please indicate this clearly in your registration and later in your evaluation. Please confirm here if your organization is a member of The Network.

We will provide a Zoom link the day before training begins.

Matriarchal Leadership: From Programmatic Work to Movement Alignment