Seeding community, empowerment, and healing with women leaders in the U.S.
Even when we are small, when we start leveraging our efforts, we become big.
-- Johanie Rivera-Zayas
2022 U.S. Grassroots Accelerator Leader
On October 26th and 27th, leaders from Women’s Earth Alliance’s 2022 U.S. Grassroots Accelerator came together for a Virtual “Collaboratory” designed to support and co-power one another through participant-led skill- and knowledge-sharing workshops. Honoring and leveraging the wisdom and practical leadership skills that all of the 28 leaders in the 2022 cohort hold, this “unconference” made space for movement-building techniques, strategies, wellness, story-sharing, and more.
The Collaboratory’s mission each year is four-fold:
- Deepen our Alliance
- Share and build skills and knowledge
- Nurture and acknowledge the work we have done and are doing
- Experience inspirational solutions in action
WEA Leaders embodied these goals in their Collaboratory work: When given the option to collaborate on presentations, they embraced the opportunity to deepen connections with one other, particularly among leaders working across sectors and with similar leadership visions. Through powerful and inspiring sessions and presentations, Leaders shared their unique skills as activists, entrepreneurs, artists, lawyers, and more. Session topics included:
The Art of Storytelling
Creative Ecology
Seed Sovereignty & Seed Keeping Through Indigenous Movements
Affinity Group & Connecting Within Our Regions
Best Practices in Engaging with California Indian Communities
Leveraging Initiative
Efforts Creating, Maintaining, and Sustaining Our Personal Water Relationships
Bridging Divides and Liberating Our Practices
Capturing the overall energy of this two-day gathering, WEA Leader Tanasia Swift said while sharing her experience with movement-building during her own session, “What may just seem like a single event is really planting the seeds for something bigger, something more.” This rang true for the Collaboratory. One of the many seeds planted and poised to flourish is the connection made between WEA Leaders Juliette Anne Jackson and Morning Star Gali, who are looking forward to future collaborations beyond the Accelerator program after they partnered up for the Collaboratory and saw long-term similarities between their work. As Juliette shared, “This is why I’m so excited to be a part of the Women’s Earth Alliance … through partnerships [like these] we can accomplish even more.”
Written by Lila Rubin, WEA Intern