Summary
The members of the participatory action research project entitled The history and future of our struggles conducted more than 40 interviews in 2020 and 2021. For the past few months, we have been working on the analysis of this data, and we recently started to write our final study. The study is expected to be completed and presented to the public in the second half of 2021. In addition, the group is currently brainstorming about ideas for different kinds of actions to turn the research results into socially impactful activities. These actions will contribute to positive social changes in the grassroots organizations represented by the co-researchers and beyond. In this paper, we provide the follow-up to our first publication with Social Publishers Foundation in 2020, as a brief overview of our ongoing activities. The follow-up activities are portrayed in videos presented by the co-researchers.
Context
The participatory action research (PAR) project entitled The history and future of our struggles started in January 2020 as a collaboration among 8 co-researchers with some background in activism and/or social organizing and three project facilitators. Today, the research team is made up of 6 co-researchers and 2 facilitators. The videos presented are based on the work of these 8 project participants. Initially, the research team intended to focus on exploring post-1989 social movements in Hungary. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the direction of the process, and the group decided to find answers to the following guiding question: What kind of political opportunities can the crisis generated by the Covid pandemic offer to grassroots organizations and how can they take advantage of these opportunities in the long run? The research team has been working on three different aspects of this comprehensive topic: (1) collaboration between civil society organizations and municipalities during the pandemic; (2) conditions for creating alliances among grassroots organizations through the example of the Solidarity Action Group and (3) political opportunities for civil society organizations during the pandemic regarding their organizational strategies, base building and communication.
Video Title and Content: The story
At the end of 2020, we created a series of short videos with English subtitles. In these videos, the participants of the PAR project share their reflections on the first year of the process. Below we provide titles and summaries of four videos. To play a video, click the link on each video.
Title: The history and future of our struggles – midterm reflection of the project coordinator
Summary: This video addresses how a PAR project was conducted online and discusses opportunities and challenges.
Title: The history and future of our struggles – midterm reflection of the social movement expert
Summary: The importance of the interaction between the roles of “researcher” and “activist” in a PAR project is addressed in this video.
Title: The history and future of our struggles – midterm reflection of the “Good advice” working group
Summary: In this video, group members discuss how to support the collaboration of civil society organizations and municipalities in Hungary with a PAR project.
Title: The history and future of our struggles – midterm reflection of the “Horizon” working group
Summary: Members of a second working group address how Hungarian civil society organizations have been reacting to the challenges of the pandemic.
To cite this work, please use the following reference:
Ádám, Z., Lohász, C., Lukács, M., Mihály, M., Molnár, Z., Rosenfeld, A., Sebály, B., Udvarhelyi, T., Vass, Z., & Zsámboki, M. (2021, May 23). The history and future of our struggles regarding grassroots organizations in Hungary during the pandemic: Follow up – May 2021. Social Publishers Foundation. https://www.socialpublishersfoundation.org/knowledge_base/the-history-and-future-of-our-struggles-regarding-grassroots-organizations-in-hungary-during-the-pandemic-follow-up-may-2021/