Evolving + Emerging Economies Jam 2017
What?
30 diverse visionaries, movement builders, organizers, impact investors, time bankers, entrepreneurs, & community leaders will gather for a week of deep listening, sharing, self discovery, systemic inquiry & true community building.
When?
Dates: April 11-15, 2017 (note the date change!)
Where?
Location: Quaker Center, Ben Lomond, CA – a wholesome, beautiful and serene gathering place among the redwoods in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Why you?
Because you are invested in and working towards shifting economies in some way; because you crave community & support in this journey.
Because supportive community is fertile ground for the quadruple bottom line: people, profit, purpose & planet; because you want to share in a collective vision;
Because you are passionate and want to bring your whole self into your contribution/work/movement; because personal transformation/evolution happens within a web of deep connection & meaningful relationships.
Because engaging with diverse leadership informs your own path towards finding a place within the kind of economically healthy community that really matters to you.
Because you want to reconcile capitalism with your own need to thrive, while not being another person who leaves your values behind, or leaves marginalized people within your own life & community behind.
Why now?
Because the time is ripe for living the change you want to see; because everyone is wiser than any one; because connecting the dots is a way to get the whole picture and to make life and work more effective and fulfilling; because the time is right to explore healing a system that perpetuates our indirect contributions to systemic economic, social and environmental injustices; because now is all we've got!
How?
“This is the most I have felt 'myself' in a group setting, as the flow allowed me to open and be vulnerable. When you allow yourself to be open, you are more aware and honest about yourself…I have learned that as the leader of my organization, it is up to me to refine our mission/vision and to restructure our goals and processes. I feel I have a renewed perspective and sense of purpose with both life and work.”
– Ron Cariño, 32, co-founder and Executive Director, Soulciety, Hayward, CA
The FULL Invitation
What does it take to build thriving, just and sustainable economies?
Intertwining economic, social, ecological, and spiritual crises have created an unprecedented opportunity to nurture new ways of thinking, being, and working together to transform our economies. Never has there been such a critical moment to bring together emerging leaders to deconstruct and rebuild, unlearn and co-create, and seed the relationships of a more regenerative world.
As a change-maker, how can you thrive, grow, heal and sustain? How can you deepen your interpersonal skills to transform the relationships that underlie communities and economies? What does “the new economy” mean to you, for the many kinds of economic movements and forms of right livelihood that already exist? How can we amplify our collective impact by weaving our respective work into a supportive network? These are some of the questions that will bring together 30 diverse visionaries, social entrepreneurs, community organizers, and new economy leaders for a week of personal inquiry, resource-sharing, community-connecting, and movement-building.
With five days of co-creation in the Santa Cruz mountains at the Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, CA, the 2017 Evolving + Emerging Economies Jam is a unique opportunity to live new economies into being!
What is a Jam?
The Jam is a gathering for three different levels of change: the internal (self), the interpersonal (relationships) and the systemic (the whole). It is NOT a conference, seminar or a typical meeting.
On the internal level, it is a place for participants to share and reflect on our life journeys and what makes us who we are today. It is an opportunity to grow in self-knowledge, to ask meaningful questions, to unlearn our fears and blocks, access our hearts, and open our minds to move more boldly in the world. It is a time to recharge and renew and to experience self- and community-care and personal sustainability.
On the interpersonal level, we come together to share our cultures, our stories and our struggles, to deepen in our understanding of each other and of ourselves. The Jam values diversity and seeks to bring together as diverse a group of people as possible. During the week, we hope to discover our commonalities and celebrate our differences. We take an honest, courageous and loving look at the identities that define and often separate us – race, class, gender, sexuality, age, religion, etc., – and seek to have authentic conversations to heal these divides. The Jam provides a unique container, where continuous inquiry and intimacy create the alchemy to have these conversations in a focused, safe and loving way — on levels we don’t ‘normally’ engage in.
On the systemic level, through the Jam, we become clearer about our vision and work in the world. We get a chance to link issues that aren’t commonly linked, to notice crucial intersection points, and get a clearer picture of the whole. We have a chance to share tools and ideas to support one another. In turn, we hope this helps us to generate a body of collective wisdom for our work and a collective vision for the world we want. We also hope it will enable each participant to feel deepened in their capacity to affect meaningful positive change and carry their dreams forward.
"The space, the connections and collective resources… It's a family where everything in our lives and movement is held. It was an honor to share brainstorming sessions with such beautiful activisionary spice. Breakthroughs present so we can show up and have fluid movement in our work. Knowing that there are many paths to connect and show up in the creation of a new economy. It was solid."
– Angelique Arroyo, 36, co-founder, Lucid Legacy Community, Lancaster, PA
Who is being invited to the Evolving + Emerging Economies Jam?
As mentioned above, we seek to bring together as diverse a group of people as possible. This means we are looking for a range in:
– leadership (from ‘person on the ground’ to ‘director and founder’);
– years of experience (from ‘just starting out’ to ‘been at it for a while’);
– scope and scale (from ‘local’/micro to ‘global’/macro);
– economy work-focus (for example, time banking, local investing, worker-ownership, social entrepreneurship, solidarity organizing, gross national happiness, transition initiatives, social and economic justice, gift economy, sacred economics, local currencies, sharing economies, etc.);
– identity and world-view (class, ethnicity, race, religion, sexuality, age, etc.).
When, where and how is the E + E Economies Jam being organized?
The Jam will begin the afternoon of April 11, 2017, at the Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, CA, and end the morning of April 16, 2017. Our intention is to spend five days learning about one another, deepening in our understanding of self, each other and transformative ways to co-build the next economy, co-weaving a shared vision for the present and future — and exploring each of our roles in making that vision a reality, finding common ground and synergies through our diversity.
Logistics, Travel and Cost
We will be housed in shared rooms of 2-3, and we will be served a primarily local, seasonal, organic, delicious plant-based diet, with a few sustainable meat/fish/dairy options.
We are asking people to cover their own travel costs, and main airports are San Francisco (SFO), San Jose (SJC) and Oakland (OAK). We will have carpools to get you to the Jam location from these place and other points in the Bay Area.
Also, we love having children and whole families together at the Jam. Let us know if you'd like to bring your children and we'll work out childcare and any additional expenses with you.
Full tuition for the Evolving + Emerging Economies Jam is $850, of which $475 covers food and lodging, while $375 covers YES! program expenses (organizing time, facilitation honorarium, materials, childcare). Each participant offers a combo of tuition, work trade and scholarship that works for them. We also have monthly payment plans, so please do not let money be a barrier! This is about building the next economy, after all. :)
"Thank you for a wonderful week! Fulfilling, delicious, inspiring, motivating and gratifying! I am a larger person after the Jam in ways I didn’t even know I needed. Spectacular people, beautiful children and a deeply supportive environment."
– Devin McIntire, 26, founder, RealGoodFood.org, San Francisco, CA
Who is hosting the Evolving + Emerging Economies Jam?
We are thrilled to have RSF Social Finance as a co-sponsoring partner of this Jam, along with this fabulous team of EEE Jam alumni:
In 2008, YaVette Holts moved to a little pueblo in Nayarit, Mexico with her two young sons. Life in the quiet little beach town gave her large portions of perspective on life, love and economics. There’s nothing like seeing the US from the outside. By the time the family returned back stateside three years later, YaVette had a deep commitment to incorporate as much of the quality of life she found in Mexico into her new life back in California… to build more equitable models for the distribution of wealth focused on bigger picture values like human connection and quality of life. She founded Cowrie Village in 2012 to create ways to step away from controlling material based economics and reintroduce traditional, collective economics. Today, Cowrie Village serves as an engine for economic alternatives for the Bay Area and beyond. Under its umbrella YaVette has developed projects that meet folks where ever they are and however they’re ready.. In her words, "Every step toward sovereignty and away from the system, no matter how small, is a revolutionary act.” In addition to creating tools that emphasize interpersonal connections and deemphasize the dollar, she keeps her balance via massage, yoga, camping, time with friends, going to the ocean as often as possible, and keeping up with her now teenaged sons.
Maya Hackett is an unschooled, urban*steading, home-birthing mom of four, publisher, stylist and Legacy Architect. She moves towards life, beauty, magic; collects minute bits of grace and spins it out as community caramel. With an eye towards social justice, cultural preservation and environmental initiatives, she’s helped raise $40 million+ and designs values-infused, inspired giving plans for those with extreme wealth ($14 B). Maya has been co-founding conscious-creative movements for 22 years, most recently Waldorfish.com, the Moon Storm community, and the print field guide, Amulet. She runs Empress Tides Publishing House, Resource Studio + Gatherings, as well as Calibration Institute, a collective of world-class doctors, healers and coaches that Clear | Create | Calibrate families to their intentions at the cell level. Thru live sessions, courses, clinic visits and retreats, CI provides Compass Work to distinguish your innate legacy, based on the body’s wisdom, innate gesture and soul topography. Catch Maya’s TEDx talk, pics on instagram and twitter @urbanorganica.
Chris Tittle is passionate about life-sustaining alternatives to the neo-liberal market paradigm. As a deep ecologist, barefoot lawyer-in-training, and community resilience advocate, he currently serves as the Director of Organizational Resilience with the Sustainable Economies Law Center, an Oakland-based legal organization creating a new legal landscape that supports grassroots economic empowerment. At SELC, his work focuses on community currencies, rethinking housing and land ownership, and bringing principles of social and economic justice into non-profit funding strategies. As an advocate of self-directed (and debt-free) education, he is also training to become a lawyer through the California Law Office Study program, a practice-based alternative to law school. Chris completed an MA in Economics for Transition at Schumacher College (UK), where his dissertation explored permaculture and a Rights of Nature framework as more culturally-appropriate and transformative responses to climate change adaptation in the Global South. He has worked with youth in the South Bronx, taught English in Japan, and explored mystical Islam in Senegal. Once, on a whim, he traversed 3/4 of the globe without stepping foot on a plane. His writing can be found on Shareable.net, MNN.com, and his blog at oaktreegarden.wordpress.com.
Chinyere E. Oteh is an organizer, an artist, a mother and a seeker. She is a St. Louis native who has also lived and worked in Detroit and Washington D.C. On the creative side, she has examined her own mixed-race identity through autobiographical writing and photographic self-portraiture and has taught photography to the young and old throughout St. Louis. On the collective side, she is a Community Matchmaker who founded a time bank, in 2010, called Cowry Collective – a network geared toward forging economic equity and bridging racial divides all the while reminding each of us of our past rich cooperative practices. On the personal and healing side, she is a fierce and loving protector to her two children birthed at home in 2008 and 2012. She has practiced Transcendental Meditation since 2010 and has received her first two attunements in Reiki. She is very proud to have recently completed a Doula Training with Community Birth and Wellness Center in Ferguson, MO. As Chinyere steps more fully into healing and spiritual work she continually strives to balance the demands and joys of motherhood, career and self-care. She also rejoices in synchronicity and serendipity!
Nika Ridley is a Wild woman who writes so that she can breathe. She is a woman of many hats, both magical and mundane. She is passionate about sustainable agriculture, permaculture, animals, nature, kindness, love, and creating sustainable communities, among many other things. A Jill of all trades, she is currently building a gorgeous sustainable tiny house for a woman with immense vision. Nika lives in Northern California with her daughter and a crew of animal companions.
Shilpa Jain is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA, where she serves as the Executive Director of YES!. Prior to taking on this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she developed and supported various gift economy, community barter, and sharing initiatives, among other projects and efforts. All of her work seeks to uncover ways for people to free themselves from dominating, soul-crushing institutions and to live in greater alignment with their hearts and deepest values, their local communities, and with nature.
Any questions?
Please write to us at eeejam.yes@gmail.com if you have any questions or concerns. The sooner you apply, the more easily we can work out scholarships, work trade, and tuition that can work for you! You can find the online application here.
We are so looking forward to Jamming with you!
Chinyere, Chris, Maya, Nika, Shilpa and Yavette
The EEE Jam Organizing Team
