Centella Global Forum Bangkok

May 11, 2026 — May 15, 2026 Bangkok, Thailand

For five days in May, organizers, campaigners, journalists and strategists from Thailand, India, Singapore, Poland, Brazil and beyond worked side by side on the real campaign challenges they brought with them. No panels. No keynotes.

Most gatherings in this space are convened, programmed and staffed by people from the Global North. The Global Forum is open to everyone and led from the Global South — the conveners, the facilitators, the experts in the room, the crew running it on the ground. Bangkok was edition one of a recurring, portable format meant to carry its name from city to city.

See highlights Join the next forum

Highlights from the forum

Campaign strategy labs

Participants brought a real challenge from their own work and spent four days pulling it apart — problem, goal, target, power map, narrative, tactics, risks. Most arrived describing a symptom and left having named the actual problem.

Global South leadership

The forum centred people organizing under real constraint: shrinking civic space, hostile governments, funding that arrives late or not at all. That wasn't a session topic — it was who was in the room and who was running it.

Digital power and narrative strategy

Sessions looked hard at how movements compete for attention without flattening what they're saying. The most useful conversations were the uncomfortable ones: what storytelling is actually worth, and who pays for it.

Cross-border solidarity

A campaigner in Poland and an organizer in Tamil Nadu don't share a political context, but by midweek it was clear they shared most of their questions. The value came from feedback across sectors and borders.

Photos

Voices

The size of the forum makes everyone feel seen and reachable. The atmosphere was very comfortable and chill. I loved it.

Forum participant
The protected time set aside to think through my own challenge. Work gets busy — it's important but not urgent, so it ends up not done.

Forum participant
This was experimental, and it was awesome to be part of the experiment. You had an overall plan but didn't hesitate to change it based on what you were learning.

Forum participant

Interested in joining the next Centella Forum?

We're building a global community of movement builders, campaigners, civic leaders and strategists working to renew democracy from the ground up. Leave your details and we'll keep you posted about future convenings, trainings and campaign labs.

Interested in joining the next Centella Forum?

We're building a global community of movement builders, campaigners, civic leaders and strategists working to renew democracy from the ground up. The Global Forum is the room where that work gets done — small, hands-on, and led from the Global South.

Bangkok was edition one. Tell us where to find you, and we'll come to you first with dates for the next one, along with trainings and campaign labs in between.

Follow the journey

We'll keep sharing insights, photos and reflections in the weeks ahead.