Professional resources for transformative learning
The Freire Institute is a leading organization for critical pedagogy, popular education and transformative learning. We serve as a resource for educators, professionals, and community practitioners committed to social justice and meaningful change. By blending professional development with community-based learning, we create spaces where education becomes a tool for both personal and collective empowerment.
Education in this sense is a tool for individual and community empowerment and transformation. Our approach is informal, challenging and exciting. In our programmes your own knowledge and life experience becomes the raw material for education. We develop tools and approaches based on the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, whose work has inspired many social movements and educational programmes around the world. For professionals working in education, we help you to explore the philosophy underpinning Freire's approach, so that the tools and techniques you use are not mechanical routines but dynamic experiences.
Our work is not only for professionals working in the education field. We offer programmes for community practitioners as well. You do not need any formal qualifications to take part, just a commitment to learning and change. Programmes and activities are open to individuals, community groups, faith-based organizations and public institutions, and we can tailor programmes flexibly to suit your organization's needs. We also hold one-off community arts events and workshops around specific issues.
Our approach owes a lot to the techniques pioneered by Paulo Freire and supplemented by practice elsewhere. We also draw upon organizing principles derived from Saul Alinsky and others. These techniques and principles have been successfully adopted by community organizations, faith-based groups and issue-based networks in many countries.
