The Stay Project
Highlander is the Movement School
Training the Next Generation of Movement Leaders
We are rooted in the U.S. South and Appalachia, and grounded in a 90-year practice of participatory research and popular education, incubating the movements that drive us from the world we inherited to the one we deserve.
How We Move
Trainings
We know movement education is mission-critical to address the issues of our time. That’s why we strive to collect, refine, and publish our training resources.
Workshops
Workshops build collective knowledge and power to inform organizing work on the ground. Sign up for an upcoming workshop, or explore our archive of recorded workshops.
Our Programming
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Seeds of Fire
With a focus on the power of youth-led organizing, Seeds of Fire provides on-the-ground support, as well as guidance, mentorship, political education, and skill-based training to the rising activists of today.
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Economics & Governance
Solidarity economies are rooted in the values of solidarity, cooperation, equity, democracy, sustainability, and pluralism. They expand community ownership, participatory democratic governance, and people power.
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Cultural Organizing
Our multi-day collaborative workshop brings together 170 pivotal cultural organizers to re-up strategies & strengthen frameworks that they can bring back to their communities.
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Septima Clark Learning Center
The home of Highlander’s library and archive, with collections and programming that weave together the layered history of southern liberation, through movement memory work.
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Children’s Justice Camp
Our camp offers a week-long, in-person session for youth ages 6-12. Here, at the historic Highland Center in the Great Smoky Mountains, young people mentor one another’s leadership, with transformative experiences in community, collaboration, and confidence-building that will last a lifetime.
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Electoral Justice
Highlander’s Electoral Justice programming, led by Denzel Caldwell, is supporting communities across the U.S. and global South in defending and protecting democracy this year.
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Our Years Of Movement
In 2023, you helped our radical visions come to life. See how.
Our Years Of Movement
In 2023, you helped our radical visions come to life. See how.
Fiscal Sponsorship Organizations
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Learn MoreSCCP: The Southern Connected Communities Project
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Learn MorePower U
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Learn MorePeoples Advocacy Institute
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Learn MoreBlack Food Justice
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Learn MoreNational Bail Out
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Learn MoreGrantmakers for Southern Progress
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Learn MoreThe Black Mecca Project
The Black Mecca Project cultivates spaces which nurture Black diasporans in the practices of rest, radical imagination, fugitivity, and Black feminist community/world building. We believe these are essential and under-resourced strategies in the Black liberation ecosystem.
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Learn MoreBlack Mycelium Project
Black Mycelium is a collective of Black Queer, Transgender, Non-binary, and Gender Nonconforming people across various Southern states, united by our shared commitment to farming, organizing, healing, and building sustainable futures. Rooted in mutual support and community care, we nurture…
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Learn MoreWe Shall Overcome Fund
Sung by Pete Seeger and Joan Baez among others, the song “We Shall Overcome” was originally published by the Highlander School, has served as the theme of the Civil Rights Movement, and is now a worldwide anthem for freedom and…
Our Bookstore
Practicing Liberation Workbook
Protect Your People: How Ordinary Families are using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration
Reading, Writing, and Rising Up: Teaching About Social Justice and the Power of the Written Word
Unite and Win: The Workplace Organizer’s Handbook