Events

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As feminist leaders, movement makers and worldbuilders how do we source and manifest the vision, relationships and transformative power needed to usher in a new era of peace, thriving and interdependence? At its best, feminist leadership is rooted in fierce love and purpose, radical connections, liberatory cultures and collective empowerment. It enables us to access spirit, transform our communities and evolve us all towards wholeness. 

Join us on April 15, 2021 for conversation and embodied practice with feminist leaders from around the globe who are leading this (r)evolution of being. Come ready to participate, dream and connect! 

9 am San Francisco /10 am Central America/ 12 pm New York / 5 pm London / 6 pm South Africa / 9:30 pm Delhi / 11 pm Indonesia and South East Asia / 3 am Sydney – Check your time zone here.

Brought to you by Root. Rise. Pollinate! and Healing Solidarity.

Please use the link below to register for this webinar:

https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_oXlTm4ftSBOxY5XxXNLVWA 

Speakers Participating in this event

Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez is a fourth-generation Tewa traditional potter from San Ildefonso Pueblo in northern New Mexico was well nurtured by matriarchal ancestors Maria and Julian Martinez. Not only was she nurtured in the art of the distinctive black ware pottery, but also in modeling the heart centeredness, the lived narrative of generational wisdom sharing, seeing the world from a holistic lens envisioning how a beloved community can be dreamt and become possible.  Elder Kathy is currently the Sayain Circle of Grandmother’s Coordinator at Tewa Women United, a member of the National Council of Elders and among the Spirited Aligned Legacy Leaders.

Shereen Essof is a Zimbabwean feminist, activist, popular educator and is JASS’ Executive Director. Shereen’s work is grounded in her engagement with womxn in social movements and community-based organizations. She strives to understand the roots of oppressive systems, how they interesect in shaping our world and from that understanding to imagine and organize towards sustainable futures.

Jessica Horn is a feminist practitioner with an inclination towards digging deeper, inspiring activist alchemy and asking ‘where next’?  Her work is situated politically in Pan-African feminism and practically in interventions to affirm women’s right to live pleasurable embodied lives-free from violence, to resource activism, and build the scaffolding for feminist futures. 

Alli Finn is a queer feminist advocate, organizer, facilitator, and writer from NYC, working at the intersections of labor rights and immigration justice. From 2016-2020, she advocated for migrant domestic worker rights with the Anti-Racism Movement, a grassroots feminist organization in Beirut.  Her organizing and writing is deeply informed by transnational feminist movement spaces, and her experiences of queerness, migration, and dis/ability.

Root. Rise. Pollinate! are Rufaro Gwarada, Shawna Wakefield & Kristen Zimmerman

Rufaro Gwarada

Rufaro is committed to a world animated by unhu (ubuntu) – the understanding that collective and individual well-being are one and the same. She is a writer, facilitator, and organizer, with 10+ years working for gender justice, migrant rights, African-led solutions for Africans, and utilizing art and cultural expression as conduits for healing, liberation, and joy. She co-founded ThriveAfrica.us, Wakanda Dream Lab, and reset, and worked at organizations including CAMFED, Global Fund for Women, Africa Speaks 4 Africa, and Power California. Rufaro is home in Zimbabwe, Oakland and Sacramento, California, with Sangha, on the dance floor, and among creatives and those who strive for liberation of all peoples.

Shawna Wakefield 

Shawna is committed to cultivating joyful, trusting relationships that create true collaboration. She is a facilitator, strategist, and leader who has worked on gender, racial and economic justice for 25 years, increasing feminist leadership, transformative programming, and cultures of care and equity. Shawna has been a Gender at Work Associate, Oxfam International’s Senior Gender Justice Lead, Oxfam Gender Advisor for Southeast Asia, Researcher with Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) in Afghanistan, Program Specialist with UNIFEM, and a yoga instructor in Brooklyn, NY. She weaves her dedicated practices of Buddhism, yoga and somatics, and love of nature into her support of activists’ and survivors’ wellbeing.

Kristen Zimmerman

Kristen is committed to bringing about a world rooted in our fundamental interdependence. As an artist-storyteller, strategist, coach, and facilitator she has three decades’ experience integrating creative and mind-body-spirit practice into movement building, community, and social transformation efforts. Kristen co-founded groundbreaking projects including Movement Strategy Center, Community LORE, Youth In Focus, and Decolonize Race. She trains in Zen Buddhism, storytelling and nature-based practices, and her son Jonah helps her keep it real. Home are the places she’s experienced beloved community, including the redwoods near San Francisco Bay, the shores of Lake Michigan, and the foothills of the Himalayas. 

VIRTUAL LAUNCH OF GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT JOURNAL VOL 28 NO 1: RE-IMAGINING INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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In this recording, you can watch Caroline Sweetman and Mary Ann Clements in conversation with Jessica Horn, Ella Scheepers, Alex Martins & Jenny Hodgson – four of the authors from an edition of the Gender and Development Journal which was inspired by Healing Solidarity. 

The journal which is now available also includes writing from Brianna Strumm, Emily Wills, Diana El Richani, Nadia Abu-Zahra, Ishtar Lakhani, neha kagal, Lia Latchford, Rania Eghnatios, Francesca El Asmar, Shawna Wakefield, Kirstin Zimmerman and Tina Wallace.

There is so much great writing in the journal so do also go to the Gender and Development Journal website to access the articles. You can also find them at https://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk. Just search for each author there to find their article. 

Showing up whole: Storytelling for connection and healing

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You are invited to this, the first of our Member-led events for 2020, hosted in the Healing Solidarity Collective by Jennifer Lentfer, and happening on Thursday, Feb 6th at 4 pm GMT / 11 am EST / 8 am PST  / 7 pm EAT / 9.30 pm IST

Scary and vulnerable as it may seem, we need more people in the global development sector to tell their stories, the “why” behind what their work. Because the stories we have about ourselves are basically the river that flows underneath everything we do. In it flows our deepest motivations – often unconscious – that push us forward, that present obstacles or dictates our reactions to obstacles, that keeps us going.

We are free – right now and always – to tell as much or as little of our story as we want. We can share snippets, or the whole long thing. We can go deep into it, or tell is as if it were something emotionally separate from ourselves. Your story is always under our control.    

When we “own” our story, we are valuing our own voice, and asking other people to do the same. When we share our story, it invites every single person who hears it to think about their own story as well…thus stories are where we go to liberate, to heal, to build community. Stories are powerful and they are needed as a source of strength and solidarity to shift the power in global development.

In the session we will:                                                        
●  Explore the role of our life stories/lived experiences and our professional identities.      
●  Recall and reflect on our first experiences of knowing we wanted to “help” people and probe/understand the circumstances or the motivation around that moment/”knowing”.
●  Practice sharing our stories to invite other people into our inner lives, affirming
transparency, self-worth, purpose, and interconnectedness.         

About your host for this session: Jennifer Lentfer is a farm girl turned international aid worker turned communications strategist, writing coach, and facilitator/trainer. (But she is mostly a poet.). She is one of Foreign Policy Magazine’s “100 women to follow on Twitter” @intldogooder, an author (smartrisks.org) and a blogger at how-matters.org, in which she called for an examination of racism in international aid with its first post in 2010. She was most recently the Director of Communications at Thousand Currents, a foundation reimagining equitable approaches to philanthropy and impact investing. With her students at Georgetown, she published “The Development Element: Guidelines for the future of communicating about the end of global poverty” in 2014 and has been teaching “Storytelling and Communications for Social Change” at the University of Vermont Masters in Leadership for Sustainability Program for the past four years. She has served with various organizations in Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, and the US, including Oxfam, the Red Cross, UNICEF, Catholic Relief Services, and Firelight Foundation and has consulted with InterAction, Mama Cash, the Global Fund for Community Foundations, Nike Foundation, Feedback Labs, and the Congressional Hunger Center. Jennifer is currently writing her first play about family violence, misogyny, ableism, and U.S. healthcare, which she swears will include laughter.

Do join us for this first Member-led event of 2020 which will be happening via our dedicated space the Healing Solidarity Collective – join us there to get access to this event at collective.healingsolidarity.org.