Rebirth, Renewal, and Reconciliation
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"One Big Earth" by Maíra Martines da Costa on Amplifier
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"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
— Chief Seattle
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Rebirth, Renewal, and Reconciliation
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Ryan Picarella,
Executive VP, Growth & Partnerships
Life Guides
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Renewal
Spring is here!
The frost thaws, the seeds begin to sprout, and life emerges from the dirt. Every year, spring
means a time to clean, to greet neighbors you haven’t seen in months, and to reconnect with
the sun’s beautiful rays, as we shed our winter coats. Spring symbolizes new life, and a new
beginning. This spring feels particularly special, since we went into our global COVID
hibernation over a year ago. It’s been a difficult year - and an especially cold winter, for many.
We have witnessed the horrors of a pandemic, a divisive political climate, a nation torn with
social unrest. The inequities of our society have cast a spotlight on them, with the coldness of
the times shaking us all. In many cases, we have become numb waiting for brighter days to
warm our hearts again.
Instead, let’s take a lesson from our mother, Mother Earth, for it is her, who makes our
experience here even possible. It is her, who provides each and every day. It is her, who is the
miracle worker. At the same time, I have always been fascinated with the concept of Gaia: the
philosophy that the earth is a living being, all of her parts are working in a perfect concert. The
oceans are her lungs, the rainforest her heartbeat, the animals her cells. We are all
one working together in this seemingly perfect system. Every year, there is death – and, every
year, there is rebirth.
This year, as I see the flowers emerge, I am particularly grateful. 2020 was a year of great loss
for me, but like a snake, I have shed the skin of the past and have re-emerged feeling renewed,
refreshed and re-energized. Now, it’s the perfect time to blossom and show your beauty, as we
continue to elevate consciousness, plant seeds of love, and be the sunshine. The world needs
you; I need you. Let’s move forward together with great love for one another, as we create new
beginnings together. In this spirit, I’d like to share a few springtime tips, as we all plant seeds of
love.
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Ground yourself in good soil. Our environment is like the soil. If the world around us is not fertile, it is difficult to grow strong. Place matters too, similar to different zip codes having different life expectancies. Our homes also cultivate an environment suitable for growth, or they can hinder progress. It is wise to take stock of your surroundings now and make the necessary changes to support your growth.
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Don’t forget to water. Self-care is also key to growth. The basics matter - eat well, sleep well and move. If you find you are having trouble with the basics, engage a reliable source to help you make adjustments to be back on track.
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You need plenty of sunshine. I mean this figuratively and literally. Enjoy outside be in nature, have the rays of the amazing sunshine down on your face.
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Plant your own seeds, create a practice of gratitude. Note one thing a day (at least) to be grateful for, to plant your seeds of happiness and renewal. With each flower blooming now, smell its beautiful scent and relish in the miracle and beauty spring brings. You are the flower. Love yourself. Happy Spring 2021.
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JOIN US IN RENEWING TOGETHER
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The Well Being in the Nation (WIN) Network invites you to come together, across generations, for a week of gatherings dedicated to Renewal: How can we heal through adversity & secure legacies of well-being & justice for generations to come?
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Spring 2021 WIN Week will bring together poets and policymakers, youth and seniors, community residents and national leaders in an unparalleled week of reflection, renewal, and commitment to action.
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Share on Twitter
WIN WEEK! April 26th-30th, 2021 The @network_win invites you to come together, across generations, for a week of gatherings dedicated to “Renewal” We will take time to renew ourselves and our communities, our economy, and our earth.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/win-week-april-23-april-30-2021-tickets-146503031511
#WIN4equity #renewal
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Youth of Solutions: Nurturing Intergenerational Leadership
3:00-4:00 pm ET
This will be a space for youth stewards, coordinators - and anyone who works directly with youth to connect. The discussion will focus on what it is like to engage with youth in a digital world and how we can grow intergenerational leaders at every level.
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Racial Justice Community: Building an Equitable Economy
2:30-5:00 pm ET
Join the Racial Justice Community Action Lab to experience examples of how to be more economically inclusive in the short run and build a more equitable economy in the long run. This session will focus on applying actionable tools to advance these strategies at the intersection of racism and the economy.
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WIN Network Meeting: Renewal
11:00 am-1:00 pm ET and 2:00-4:00 pm ET
The WIN Network ground our meeting in the ways we work together to increase belonging, connection, and civic muscle as we move toward renewal. Meeting attendees will learn about dialogue as a bridging strategy--and hear from thought leaders moving toward renewal.
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WIN with Business: Visualizing & Energizing Stewards of a Well-Being Economy
12:00-1:30 pm ET
The next WIN with Business meeting will be co-led by colleagues from ReThink Health and Amplifier. Together, we will explore both big picture and personal perspectives about how a well-being economy is beginning to emerge through a rapidly-expanding ecosystem of initiatives and investors.
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Youth of Solutions: Global Dialogue
3:00-5:00 pm ET
This will be an open space for youth to discuss what renewal means to them as young leaders. This is a space for youth to connect with each other and focus on what they are passionate about. Youth will be able to discuss what this past year has been like for them and their communities.
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Thriving Together Renewals
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Social, Emotional, & Spiritual Renewal
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Explore Economic Renewal with PolicyLink
Our invitation to corporate America is the CEO Blueprint for Racial Equity, a pathway that shows how corporations can help build an equitable nation for all. In this article, we share an overview of the Blueprint, our guidance for corporations to lean into the Blueprint, and how we can build the big tent we need for a truly equitable America.
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Explore Social, Emotional, & Spiritual Renewal with Well Being Trust
To move beyond our collective pain to a place of healing, we must begin by addressing the mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being of the American people just as urgently as we put in place strategies for civic and economic renewal.
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Explore Civic Renewal with Institute for Public Life and Work
If national service is to promote productive citizenship, we need to redefine the terms “service” and “citizenship” alike. Fortunately, both past and present provide clues to guide us.
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TOOLS TO BUILD WELL-BEING
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Photo by Tamaqua Community Arts Center
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New Report Examines the Role of Arts and Culture in Fostering Social Cohesion and Community Well-Being
Social cohesion is a basic requirement of healthy communities, especially now since the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted trauma and exposed social, racial, and health inequities across the country. A new report, WE-Making: How Arts & Culture Unite People to Work Toward Community Well-Being, shows that place-based arts and cultural practices, or creative placemaking, can help grow social cohesion to encourage community well-being.
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ArtsFund
ArtsFund strengthens the community by supporting the arts through leadership, advocacy, and grant-making.
ArtsFund envisions
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Conetoe Family Life Center
The Conetoe Family Life Center, established in 2007, mission is to improve the health of the youth and community by increasing access to healthy foods, increasing physical activities and providing access to health services.
The goal is to change the poverty cycle in families through improving the resources available to families, specifically children. “Change the children by education and opportunity = Change for the family.”
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The Center for Popular Democracy
The Center for Popular Democracy works to create equity, opportunity and a dynamic democracy in partnership with high-impact base-building organizations, organizing alliances, and progressive unions. CPD strengthens our collective capacity to envision and win an innovative pro-worker, pro-immigrant, racial and economic justice agenda.
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Listen First Project
Listen First Project leads the collaborative movement to heal America. We enhance the impact, visibility and voice of the interpersonal bridge building field by aggregating, aligning, and amplifying the efforts of 300+ #ListenFirst Coalition partners into large scale, collective campaigns and strategies.
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Weaving Community
#WeavingCommunity responds to this moment of crisis by inviting honest conversation, authentic human connection and meaningful civic action. It strives to turn this moment of shared pain into a moment of shared possibility.
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America Talks
America Talks is a powerful two-day event that invites Americans to connect one-on-one* via video across our political divides. Thousands of Americans will join these conversations simultaneously, and millions more will be inspired by their example.
Join a weekend of Connection in the Midst of Deep Division
June 12th & 13th, 2021
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Local Voices Network
Local Voices Network (LVN) is devoted to engaging and amplifying under-heard voices to inform public understanding, policy development and decision-making.
Our goal is to restore our civic fabric by fostering community conversation and elevating insights that are too often missed in mainstream and social media. To get there, we prioritize agency, inclusion, and connection.
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Madison Police and Fire Commission Report
After the abrupt resignation of the police chief in the fall of 2019, the Madison Police and Fire Commission (PFC) reached out to the Local Voices Network. With the support of the Mayor, they wanted to be sure to collect community input in the hiring process. LVN was asked to convene a series of small group recorded conversations for deeper stories than could emerge from the PFC’s planned “town hall” style meetings.
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Listen to a compilation of highlights from these conversations
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Othering & Belonging Institute
The Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley brings together researchers, organizers, stakeholders, communicators, and policymakers to identify and eliminate the barriers to an inclusive, just, and sustainable society in order to create transformative change. We are a diverse and vibrant hub generating work centered on realizing a world where all people belong, where belonging entails being respected at a level that includes the right to both contribute and make demands upon society and political and cultural institutions.
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Targeted Universalism
The challenge of othering and belonging is the challenge of our time. Putting these ambitious changes on the agenda for equity advocates cannot be more critical.
Targeted Universalism is a much-needed framework for putting belonging into practice—for grounding the idea of what structural belonging and inclusion can look like in its most robust and radical sense.
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Water Equity and Security in Detroit's Water and Sewer District
Ensuring access to drinking water and wastewater service is a nationwide policy challenge. Across the United States access is increasingly insecure for many people and places. In this report we comply with scholarship and legal precedent that defines access to include access to residential in-home service, quality service that serves environmental and personal health, and affordable service.
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Community Economic Development & Healthcare Playbook
How can community developers partner with healthcare institutions to create career pathways in low-income neighborhoods?
Community Economic Development & Healthcare Playbook provides strategies, on-the-ground examples, and a four-step pathway to partnerships. It showcases cross-sector strategies and partnerships that are working to support local entrepreneurs, create training and career pathways, leverage capital for local health facilities, improve access to healthy food, and leverage assets from health institutions in low-income and BIPOC communities across the country.
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North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NC DHHS) is recruiting for an exceptional Chief Health Equity Officer
We are seeking a dynamic Chief Health Equity Officer with both strategic and business operations acumen to drive NC DHHS’s equity strategy. Serving as a visionary and influential member of my executive leadership team and direct report to me, the ideal candidate will help NC DHHS further its commitment to delivering services and evaluating existing structures through a lens of equity and inclusion. This position will engage staff, experts and stakeholders in the field of health equity to evolve DHHS’s equity practices. The ideal candidate will demonstrate change management skills, unwavering will, persuasive and collaborative abilities, analyses of data, and strong relationship building and communications skills.
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Our Towns Trailer (2021): Official Trailer | HBO
From Academy Award-nominated filmmakers Steven Ascher and Jeanne Jordan, Our Towns is a documentary that paints a remarkable picture of America and how the rise of civic and economic reinvention is transforming small cities and towns across the country.
Based on journalists James and Deborah Fallows' book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America, the film spotlights local initiatives and explores how a sense of community and common language of change can help people and towns find a different path to the future. Our Towns premieres April 13 on HBO.
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With “Choctaw Animals” for piano, Charles Shadle honors his Native American heritage
MIT composer hopes his newest work builds connections — between music and his Choctaw heritage, between classical and traditional music, and between generations in the Choctaw Nation.
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Photo by Allegra Boverman
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Children and Nature Network
4/27 at 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM ET
This interactive workshop will introduce the core components of the Thriving Together framework. Attendees will deepen their understanding of the framework through dialogue, a practice that bridges difference and builds civic muscle. Attendees will leave the workshop with a set of tools and resources to begin to explore transformational change in their organizations, communities, or networks.
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Build Healthy Places Network and Shift Health Accelerator
5/19 at 12:00 PM - 2:00 PM ET
The purpose is to engage audiences across California and beyond to extend the reach and use of the recently published Healthy Neighborhood Investments Policy Scan and Strategy Map and to collaborate to identify state and local policy recommendations.
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Children and Nature Network
5/19 - 5/21
CNU 29.Design for Change will focus on the intersection between design and power. The power design holds to influence the way we live, to physically change and adapt the spaces we inhabit, as well as how we can use it to achieve the change we want to see in neighborhoods, towns, cities, and across regions. More than that, design is a tool that empowers neighborhood residents to imagine and create the places they want.
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