HOME (Healing Our Movement Ecosystem) Jam 2015
POSTPONED – MORE INFORMATION COMING SOON!
Healing Our Movement Ecosystem (HOME) Jam
April 7-12, 2015
in heart of the Appalachian mountains, West Virginia
Greetings! We are glad to share with you the invitation for the second annual Healing Our Movement Ecosystem (HOME) Jam. It will take place from April 7-12, 2015, at the Appalachian South Folklife Center–a community retreat center in the ancient mountains of Appalachia–near Charleston, West Virginia.
The HOME Jam brings together approximately 30 environmental change-makers from diverse backgrounds and regions for five days of connecting, growing, dreaming and learning together.
APPLY NOW! Final Application Deadline: February 20, 2015
Why HOME?
Healing Our Movement Ecosystem – HOME. These few words capture the content and purpose of the Jam. HOME is the common ground between the environmental justice, ecology, and conservation movements. Protecting and stewarding our planetary home–locally, regionally, globally—is what we care most about. We gather to honor the many and diverse peoples who are making home in this world, while also honoring all the other members of our home family–from the plants to the animals, from the rivers to the oceans, from the mountains to the deserts.
At every level of action, environmentalists, indigenous peoples, alternative builders, eco-justice warriors, scientists, legal/policy advocates, and others, all identify with the need to ensure the vitality of our planet and all its peoples for generations to come. Yet, it’s rare for folks from across the environmental movement ecosystem to come together in a spirit of healing for personal, interpersonal, and systemic transformation.
Our own experiences and interviews with folks across the environmental sector reveal common challenges with personal and organizational sustainability in our struggles to defend the Earth: lack of time, burnout, overstretched capacities, and limited resources. The wider community of support necessary to face these challenges with fresh eyes and open hearts is often missing. The sector as a whole is working overtime, but lacking collaborative connections across social, cultural, and economic divides. A holistic, systemic vision of how all the parts fit together feels hard to come by. Too often, an understanding of interconnection does not translate to the grounded realities of our movements. Slowing down in every way seems essential to turn the tide, and yet urgency and overwhelm are the norm.
The HOME Jam aims to create a space for us to share in a lived experience of the transformative potential at the heart of our organizations, our movements, and our world.
We are hoping to embark on new forms of personal learning and deep community building to strengthen our ability to act collectively. We are guided by these inquiries:
– How can we each bring forth our particular gift and contribution and connect it to the whole?
– How can we learn from the diverse approaches each of us has to making environmental change and find ways to synergize and support one another?
– How can we co-create a shared vision of transformation and lift up each of our roles toward manifesting it?
– How can we apply our wisdom and life experiences to catalyze ongoing healing and transformation at all levels of our lives—our organizations, communities, regions, and country?
We invite YOU, as a key leader in this field, to join us in co-creating a pathway for personal and systemic change within and across the environmental sector.
Why West Virginia?
We are honored to be offering this Jam in West Virginia with our lead host, Keeper of the Mountains. We feel the historical and contemporary context of West Virginia, its many gifts and its many struggles, make it an incredible place for us to come together. Still today, there is no guaranteed access to clean drinking water for 300,000 households in West Virginia after the Elk River chemical leak in January (2014). Despite all the research and years of advocacy to stop mountaintop removal, recently there has been a mountaintop removal permit approved for a ridge adjacent to the Kanawha State Forest near Charleston, WV. They have placed blast warning signs above trail head signs on the hiking paths. The health issues related to mining continue to plague local communities with new reports of unusually high instances of cancer near and around the coal fields. Yet, even in the face of destruction and turmoil, the power of a resilient people grows– whole communities who are finding ways to care for each other, to come together, to support one another. There are stellar organizations and self-organized communities who have found ways to not just survive but also create and regenerate. We anticipate that coming together in such a profoundly special, local context will enable all of us to reflect on our own struggles in a new way and to contribute in a spirit of shared learning and solidarity.
What’s a Jam?
In music, a jam is a creative, live gathering of musicians who together spontaneously create a new sound; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly for us, a Jam is a place where visionaries and leaders bring together their passion, vision, openness, and courage. They share what they have and receive from others and create together with no preconceived script. The Jam only asks that all the players are present and ready to listen deeply to each other, to weave layers of experience, wisdom, heart, and spirit together. In the realness of this connection, magic can be created.
To date, more than 100 Jams have been held on six continents, bringing together young and intergenerational leaders from more than 80 nations. The HOME Jam is being co-organized by a diverse group of environmental and ecology leaders and is being supported by The Keeper of the Mountains Foundation <www.mountainkeeper.org> and YES! <www.oldsite.yesworld.org>
What to expect at the HOME Jam?
The Jam aims to address three interconnected levels of transformation: the internal, the interpersonal, and the social/systemic. It is not a conference, seminar or a typical meeting. It offers multiple opportunities for deep, holistic exploration, in which each person has something to offer and something to receive. Through activities like facilitated dialogues, sharing circles, artistic expression, games, movement, participant-led workshops, outdoor adventure, community dialogue, and lots of free time for spontaneous interactions amongst the participants, we will together explore our own experiences, questions, and dynamics.
On the internal level: we give ourselves space to reflect on our personal stories, learn and unlearn, take off our masks, seek our next growing edge, recharge, and renew.
On an interpersonal level, we come together to discover common ground and celebrate differences. We take time for authentic conversations to bridge our divides (across our identities, geographies, organizing modes, etc.), and take an honest, courageous, and loving look at our conflicts and relationships with one another.
On a systemic level, we link issues that aren’t commonly linked to find new intersection points and gain a clearer vision of the whole. We examine our work and role within the bigger picture, and deepen our capacity to affect meaningful change upon leaving the Jam.
We will draw upon the power of collective visioning, new storytelling, personal and interpersonal transformation, systemic analysis, and deep integration. Through activities, exchanges, and just plain hanging out together, we get a chance to take stock. To see things from new perspectives. To activate our imaginations, creativity, and curiosity. To align our vision and values. To face our fears and overcome our blocks. We get to heal and to find new friends and partners in our journey.
Who can attend?
We are generally looking for diverse leaders in the environmental/ecology sector, flexibly between the ages of 20-60. If you want to see a change in how the sector operates and want to be part of making that happen, if you are open to learning from people different from you, if you are willing to push the edges of your comfort zone, then this gathering has something to offer you.
We look for a vibrant diversity in…
– experience (from ‘just starting out’ to ‘been at it for years’)
– roles (from ‘person on the ground’ to ‘director and founder’; from ‘entrepreneur’ to ‘healer’ to ‘philanthropist’ to ‘parent’ to ‘organizer’ to ‘urban farmer’ – to so much more)
– passions and focus (rivers, forests, endangered species, oceans, climate change, urban, rural, waste, energy, etc.)
– identities and world-views (e.g. class, race, religion, sexuality, gender, age, dis/ability, ethnicity, etc.)
To leverage the movement-building impact of the Jam, we encourage applicants to identify other individuals and organizations with whom you would like to collaborate more effectively and encourage them to apply as well.
Who is organizing this Jam?
Elise Keaton Liegel grew up in Raleigh County, West Virginia. After graduation from high school, she attended Virginia Tech where she earned a degree in Political Science with a concentration in Legal Studies. It was there that she met Larry Gibson and began her environmental activism against mountaintop removal coal mining. She worked as a student volunteer for the Stanley Heirs Park on Kayford Mountain until she graduated in 2002. Inspired to learn more about environmental issues, Elise went on to earn a law degree from the University of Houston Law Center in 2005 and focused her studies on environmental policy related to mountaintop removal coal mining. In 2008, Elise was licensed to practice law in the state of Colorado where she worked as a policy analyst and later as a policy adviser to non-profits. She went on to become the campaign manager for the Higher Education Access Alliance and later a contract and volunteer lobbyist at the state level in Colorado. Elise returned to West Virginia in 2011 and returned to her environmental activism as the Executive Director for The Keeper of The Mountains Foundation. She currently chairs the Governmental Affairs Committee for the West Virginia Environmental Council and serves as Chair for the Mountain Party of West Virginia.
Kyle Lemle is an environmental research professional and community-based natural resource management specialist based in Oakland/Berkeley, CA. He has worked at international environmental NGOs over the past six years, and currently serves as Manager of Programs and Impact at Global Footprint Network, where he works on policy applications for the Ecological Footprint. In 2010, he conducted fieldwork in the Kingdom of Bhutan for his thesis on the translation of local, spiritual and scientific systems of knowledge in the community forestry program. Building on this, he spent 2012-2013 working in Thailand as a research fellow at RECOFTC – The Center for People and Forests. When he is not typing about trees, Kyle tries to spend as much time as possible walking in the woods and/or writing and singing.
Lazzuly Mello is an earth based creature who thrives on love, nurturing and community. She is based in the Bay Area where she studies Community Mental Health at the California Institute of Integral Studies. For the past 5 years Lazzuly has been involved with rethinking waste through a reusable dish program that began at the Whole Earth Festival in Davis, CA and is now serving a larger audience at transformative festivals on the west coast that seek to bridge art, music, spirituality and sustainability. Her involvement with zero waste has also included sorting through thousands of pounds of trash at music festivals and landfills in an effort to divert waste from the landfill. In 2011, after graduating from the University of California at Davis, she served an an AmeriCorps member in East Oakland where she worked as a garden educator in an after-school program. Her most memorable highlight of her AmeriCorps year was watching her student harvest a beet and eat it straight out of the earth, with red juice dripping down her mouth, her young student smiled with understanding, me and the earth are one. She is passionate about the conservation of species and culture and has spent the past 3 months delving into the beauty of Brazilian ecosystems. In 2010 she was part of an intensive biology program in Brazil where she studied with researchers based in the Amazon rainforest, the Atlantic rainforest and the tropical Savannah. Her passion for all life is coupled with a deep desire to heal the wounds of the earth while simultaneously healing the wounds within ourselves and our collective communities.
Colin O’Brien is a staff attorney at Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law organization dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. Based in Anchorage, AK, his work has focused on protecting clean air from the effects of destructive oil drilling and mining and safeguarding the North Pacific marine ecosystem from unsustainable commercial fishing practices. Prior to joining Earthjustice, Colin cut his teeth at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, DC and, before that, at a large law firm in New York City.
Jodi Lasseter grew up in the Appalachian mountains of North Carolina and currently lives in Durham, NC. Through her business, Turning Tides Consulting, she brings transformative organizing and participatory learning tools to environmental justice organizations. She is currently focused on convening the first North Carolina Climate Justice Summit. In her previous positions as National Program Director with the Engage Network and Director of Organization Development for the Amazon Alliance, Jodi worked closely with hundreds of community leaders here and abroad to build grassroots power. She also founded WEB (Whole Earth Balance) a women’s leadership incubator devoted to spiritual activism. Jodi delights in community singing, walking in the woods, playing frame drums and taking a dip in her favorite swimming holes.
Shilpa Jain is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA, where she serves as the Executive Director of YES!. YES! works with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change, and aims to co-create thriving, just and balanced ways of life for all. 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 served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network. She has researched and written numerous books and articles and facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings with hundreds of young leaders from over 50 countries. She is passionate about dance and music, organic and natural farming, upcycling and zero waste living, asking appreciative questions and being in community.
Dates, venue and contribution
The Jam will be held from the afternoon of Tuesday, April 7, until the morning of Sunday, April 12, at Appalachian South Folklife Center, a retreat center in Pipestem, WV (just outside of Charleston, WV). It is a naturally beautiful place, away from the hustle-bustle of modern life, both inspiring and rejuvenating — http://www.folklifecenter.org/
The total costs of the Jam are $600 per participant ($250 for food, lodging and transport; $350 for program costs of organizing and facilitator honorarium, materials, supplies). We ask that participants make and cover their own travel arrangements and also consider contributing a minimum of $250 toward their food and accommodation. We were able to do some fundraising to bring the costs down to this rate. However, we also realize that this is still a significant amount for many people, and we do not want money to be an impediment to your participation. So if you are able to contribute more, wonderful! The extra amount will go towards our scholarship pool. Even if you are not able to contribute as much, we definitely want you, too! We can work out scholarships and/or work-trade arrangements as needed. Just let us know.
Also, we welcome children to the Jam; we love having whole families sharing the Jam experience. We will work out the costs of childcare and additional expenses with you!
Apply today! Our final application deadline is February 20, 2015.
Please feel free to contact us at <homeecojam@gmail.com> if you have any queries. We eagerly look forward to hearing from you!
With gratitude for who you are and what you do,
Elise, Kyle, Lazzuly, Colin, Jodi and Shilpa
