Ariel Bowering is a trainer and facilitator from Edmonton, Canada and a Training Associate with Training for Change.

bowering@gmail.com

Born and raised in Edmonton, she loves her quirky prairie city and is committed to deepening her roots there; she loves to seek out experiences in other places to bring back and share with her home communities. After being absolutely inspired by participating in the Super-T in Philadelphia in 2008, she helped to bring the Super-T to Edmonton in the summer of 2009, the second time the training has been held in Canada.

Ariel spent the last five years working for the Alberta Public Interest Research Group (APIRG) where she had the opportunity to support students transform their social concerns into effective action. Her work at the PIRG and exposure to Training for Change's methods inspired her to return to school. She started a Masters of Education specializing in Adult Education at the University of Alberta in fall 2010.  She expects her research to focus on how educational practices undertaken by activist organizations support participants accessing an expanded sense of their own capacities to effect change.

Being exposed to feminist theory in undergraduate Women's Studies classes and participating in informal activist groups on and off the university campus increased Ariel's awareness about her implication in structures of power and privilege in the world. Most importantly, these experiences got her thinking about how she might contribute to dismantling them. This motivated her to wade into student governance at the department and faculty level to establish student governance organizations with non-hierarchical and consensus based models. It has also meant that she approaches each organizing experience trying to identify ways in which the processes and practices undertaken reflect liberatory ideals just as much as whatever it is the group has set out to accomplish. 

Her own engagement currently includes sitting on the Advisory Board for the Community Service Learning (CSL) Program at the University of Alberta (CSL links academic course work to community-based experiences by supporting student's active engagement with not-for-profit organizations where they explore relationships between course concepts and ‘real world’ contexts), and the Advisory Committee for NextUp Alberta, (NextUp is a leadership program for young people committed to social and environmental justice).

Ariel has trained groups in board governance, using consensus-based decision-making, communicating in groups, and facilitating meetings. What really gets her excited these days is her work as a founding member of the Centre for Organizing and Popular Education (COPE). COPE is an emerging coalition of academics, educators, activists and organizers interested in promoting positive social, political and economic change and building community in the face of global neoliberalism. COPE's focus is on the potential for educating to expose and foster the connections between seemingly disparate issues and provide a site where our actions might manifest as a movement.
Strongly motivated by a commitment to collective liberation Ariel understands diverse struggles as interdependent. She is inspired by our innate ability to manifest our own liberation, and feels this unfolding is most strongly supported by acting reciprocally and from within community. Through compassionate practices and mindful awareness of the ways we move through the world, everything is possible.

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