El Taller

is an international ngo based in Tunis, Tunisia with over 500 partners organizations in the world. El Taller seeks to be a space for reflection, exchange and networking for a wide spectrum of civil society and social movements.
 
In pursuit of our ideals and vision, we have and continue to develop regional programs in Africa, Asia, Arab world, Mediterranean region, Latin and Central America by facilitating Courts of Women, international training courses (e.g. ngo leadership courses and the Open University), roundtables, café conversations, seminars and conferences on a regular basis. In addition we cooperate with our partners in the regions through solidarity in undertaking other initiatives aimed at strengthening ngos in civil society.

History:
The beginnings of El Taller were articulated through three think tanks that were held in Reus, Spain (March 1990), Pattaya, Thailand (December 1990) and in Santiago, Chile (November 1991). The third think tank was also the Founding Assembly of the El Taller Foundation, which was attended by over hundred and fifty leaders of civil society. In its Santiago Appeal, the members stressed the need for South-South dialogue and South-North dialogue in the context of the principle and practice of peoples iniatives in different countries and cultures at various levels especially at the grassroots. At the Founding Assembly, it was decided to locate El Taller in Tunis, Tunisia.

Since March 1992, from its international headquarters in Tunis, El Taller has woven itself into an international network of ngos and social movements. With its roots in the Arab region, the organization continutes to making its contribution to the enhancement of South-South exchange and dialogue across diverse cultures and civilizations.

Vision:
El Taller is an international non-governmental organisation located in the South. Its focus is on the global south. The South as kind world, as the civilization of Africa, Asia, Pacific. And, Latin American cultures. The South as the movements of people, wherever they exist; the south as the visions and wisdoms of women; the South as the discovering of new paradigms, which challenge the existing theoretical concepts and categories, breaking the mind constructs, seeking a new language to describe what it perceives, refusing the one, objective, rational, scientific world view as the only world view; the South as the recovery of other cosmologies, the South as the discovery of other knowledges that have been hidden, submerged, silenced. The South as an insurrection of these subjugated knowledges.

El Taller works with civil society organisations worldwide, especially ngos and social movements, whose work challenges the underlying structural causes of the increasing dispossession of peoples, the destruction of cultures and the deepening of poverty and under development and seeks non-violent means in the search for alternatives to conventional development approaches. These alternatives are coming from the voices on the periphery and are being communicated across cultures. This has become particularly crucial in the face of the moral and political vacuum that has emerged from the current confusion around the new world order, the globalisation of the market economy and the push towards global uniformity and the homogenization of cultures and civilizations.

Our vision compels us to find new relevant spaces and alternative visions through the diverse expressions of civil society. In our quest for new terrain we are rooting ourselves in different regions in a process of regionalisation of El Taller''s structures and are discovering new ways to relate to civil society and communities on the periphery. This new rootedness is enabling us to challenge the dominant discourse of development, human rights, gender, environment from regional and local perspective.

Our praxis:
El Taller is committed to strengthen ngos, as one of the actors of civil society, through capacity building and facilitating linkages, including advocacy, towards influencing decision-making processes at all levels.

By creating spaces for reflection and deep analyses, El Taller contributes to strengthening civil society. Our support and solidarity to ngos and social movements for justice, peace, gender, environment, human rights and our capacity building approach to training and education are means to challenging dominant world views, to participating in cultural conversations, and to finding new and relevant possibilities for our times.