Organization & Leadership – The Rising Foundation

Future Whenua

Executive Director — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 13:50:42 +0000

TThe Future Whenua Collective is an innovative initiative focused on regenerating the land and fostering deep community connections across Aotearoa, New Zealand. It operates on a cohort model, selecting ten proven regenerative leaders to engage in a 10-week learning journey, culminating in a three-day gathering. This process involves collaborative discussions, skill-sharing, and the creation of an archival video pitch for each project. Funded participants receive $1,000 for their time, with an additional financial pool distributed through sociocratic decision-making. Inspired by the need for grassroots-driven environmental stewardship and resource allocation methods, the Collective aims to build a bioregional fund, attracting significant philanthropic support to empower local communities and enhance ecological resilience. This initiative embodies the principles of sustainability, collaboration, and holistic care for both the land, its people, and our kin, envisioning a future where interconnected efforts lead to a thriving, regenerative society.

Youth Co-op Connection

Executive Director — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 00:00:39 +0000

Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project’s (ANV) mission is to elevate life for youth and their families in Oakland and beyond by challenging oppressive dynamics and environments through urban farming and access to the natural environment. Founded and led mainly by women and People of Color, ANV engages youth and families in safe and creative outdoor spaces in Oakland and the East Bay, CA. ANV strengthens young people’s understanding of nutrition, food production, healthy living, and the natural environment, and strengthens their ties to their community.

The Youth Co-op Connection project focuses on cooperative education, in practice, necessitates active learning, self-directed inquiry, and hands-on experience. It promotes learning that is relevant and connected to the lives of young individuals, nurturing their ability to question, analyze, and challenge the status quo, in collective action. This project centers underserved Black youth and will offer a nuanced and comprehensive open source curriculum for cooperative education, catered to middle school age youth. The curriculum design will be adaptable and applicable across diverse education settings, including public schools, youth entrepreneurship programs, alternative education settings, and after-school programs.

Sociocracy For All

Executive Director — Mon, 16 Jan 2023 00:00:43 +0000

Sociocracy For All (SoFA) aims to spread the use of egalitarian, sociocratic governance. SoFA provides content and training, supporting networks and communities of practice among people in similar sectors and language groups.

The Metasynthesis and Research on Sociocracy (MARS) project systematizes, advances, and curates the research on sociocracy and in decentralized, consent-based organizations in general. MARS has a special focus on three focus areas:

Team performance
DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion)
Psychological safety

It will provide high-quality information for practitioners on what research shows in useful measures around those focus areas in the context of self-management. We hope to build a stronger case for our work and our colleagues to strengthen the movement overall. We’re also excited about stimulating more academic research on sociocracy and helping to focus that research around questions that are particularly useful for the field.

Safe Place International

Executive Director — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 00:00:24 +0000

SafePlace International has three years of experience working to meet the needs of DMRs in Greece and other parts of the world. Greece’s bleak economic environment has meant an unemployment rate of twenty five percent, making it especially difficult for DMRs to find work. In order to assist DMRs to be competitive in a job market that excludes a significant proportion of the local population, let alone migrants, SPI has established the Dream Academy and expanded on the vocational and skills training provided in the ACC to support DMRs with attaining the skills they need to be successful in gaining employment.

The Community Center currently serves as the hub for DMRs in Athens, offering individual casework sessions to all beneficiaries, daily Greek and English language classes, basic maths and financial literacy classes, weekly workshops facilitated by fellow community center residents or partner organizations (previous workshops include dance, theater, community organizing, yoga and meditation), trauma-focused counseling, and comprehensive vocational training which encompasses CV building, computer literacy and programming, physical presentation, and finding opportunities to match skill sets and interests. In addition to the 80 residents that usually reside in the Athens Housing Collective and Moms2Moms shelters, the center welcomes up to 100 marginalized refugees in the greater Athens region daily to access the community center’s resources.

Office for Refuge, Asylum and Migration

Executive Director — Thu, 12 May 2022 00:00:27 +0000

Founded in 2008, ORAM is recognized as one of the first international NGOs to assist people fleeing persecution based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression. It has since become a thought leader in LGBTIQ migration. Our mission is to protect and empower LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees globally, creating sustainability and systemic change. Over the last decade, ORAM has trained NGOs, governments and the UNHCR on the unique protection needs of the severely marginalized LGBTIQ refugee population. We have supported thousands of LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees from navigating the long asylum process from the moment they arrive in their first country of asylum to being resettled to a safe third country.

ORAM currently supports LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees in Mexico, Kenya and Uganda, as well as supporting LGBTIQ displaced Ukrainians in Berlin, Germany. Our programs in each geographical location are tailored to the specific needs of the community we serve, by ensuring that those with lived experiences are included in all stages of our work.

ORAM’s main focus is on advancing economic inclusion through livelihood programs, through capacity building and training, in order to build self-reliance; however, we also provide critical emergency response where needed, as well as legal assistance and advocacy through championing the rights of LGBTIQ asylum seekers and refugees on the global stage.

Supporting Innovative, LGBTIQ Refugee-led Entrepreneurship and Empowerment Programs in Kenya

ORAM’s goal is to empower vulnerable but resilient LGBTIQ refugees around the world. We do this in Kenya by providing online and in-person skills and capacity building training sessions, as well as providing seed-funding to those unable to access education and training due to their sexual orientation and / or gender identity and expression (SOGIE), as well as their status as a foreigner and refugee. This way, we enable the community to have a fair chance at finding or creating meaningful employment. Trainings enable them to find placements in local businesses or start their own businesses and generate income to survive on a daily basis, as well as support the wider community.

Youth Power Coalition

Executive Director — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 15:24:38 +0000

The Youth Power Coalition (YPC) weaves community, makes information accessible, develops leaders, mobilizes resources, and advocates for youth power. Youth-led collective impact is both outcome and process. The outcome is every Black teenager is safe, every child has housing, every young person can shape the world.

The process is

community-led, particularly by young people most impacted by inequity
comprehensive, recognizing the interdependence of systems, institutions, people, history, and context
co-creative, with people of diverse backgrounds, identities, and perspectives working together
equity-centered, unrelenting in our pursuit of a world in which social, economic, and political outcomes are not based upon a person’s background or identity
well-capitalized, investing generously in community-led change
caring, valuing not just metrics and numbers, but dignity, respect, and belonging
courageous, where we dare to be vulnerable, take risks, and act

We call these the 7C’s of Collective Impact.

Our project is to create a mass training program that equips young people of color and
from low-income backgrounds with the skills needed to organize youth-led collective
impact efforts.

“Mass training is not one big training. Mass training allows for thousands of leaders to join your movement while maintaining autonomy (allowing people to take independent action) and unity (on the key DNA of the movement – the story, strategy, structure, and culture). Mass trainings accomplish the following:

Give people the ability to act autonomously through distributing the DNA of the
movement.
Replicate and scale – everything in the training program from the curriculum to the roles to the support structure is systematized in order to grow exponentially while maintaining quality.
Provide transformative leadership development experiences, such that participants leave with a transformed understanding of themselves as leaders, and a new vision for what’s possible.” —Mass Training Webinar, Momentum Movement

We will have created a mass training program when we have

A standardized curriculum
A cohort of young people and adult allies to lead training sessions
The infrastructure to support 10,000 people joining the youth-led collective impact
movement at any given time

Sociocracy For All

Executive Director — Tue, 24 Aug 2021 15:34:14 +0000

SoFA is itself a sociocratic organization of about 180 members, some of whom are paid full or part-time, and all volunteer a significant amount of time operating SoFA as a member-run nonprofit.

We understand SoFA as an ecosystem where all parts form a cohesive and mutually beneficial whole. We offer:

High-quality content freely available via Creative Commons licenses that help people discover and learn sociocracy and improve their use of sociacracy with content around facilitation, roles and circles, conflict resolution and communication.
Training ranging from introductory to advanced about the three core elements of sociocracy: consent decision making, designing decentralized organizations, and feedback processes.
Consulting services to support organizations in their impelemntation of sociocracy
The opportunity for those who are excited by sociocracy to join SoFA as members and participate in the continuous learning and contribution to the spread of sociocracy. These members join working teams we call “Circles.”
Learning and networking events for the public such as conferences, webinars, and communities of practice.

Using sociocracy with children is a step towards building a future where there are more inclusive decisions, with adults who have grown up experiencing empowerment and are well-versed in collaborative decision-making. In a formal study at the Rainbow Cummunity School in Asheville, NC, USA, students practicing sociocracy were found to have a much greater ability to adopt the perspective of others than their peers. Sociocracy increases empathy as we learn to deeply listen to others. Everyone’s voices are heard and everyone’s needs are considered. This can lead to a more respectful environment for children to flourish in.

Inside Circle

Executive Director — Mon, 21 Jun 2021 00:00:19 +0000

Inside Circle supports incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men on a deep, transformational personal growth journey that culminates in not just reduced violence and recidivism, but in active, dedicated service to others. We begin by focusing on healing emotional trauma through weekly peer-led healing circles and bi-annual intensives. As participants mature, we train them to facilitate their struggling peers in healing circles and continue that training after release to support their reentry to society.  When ready, we create opportunities for our paroled, trained formerly incarcerated facilitators to earn a living wage and serve society.

An emerging trend in our national projects is the absence of young people with the skill set to provide the social-emotional tools that are needed in our society. There are an abundance of young people willing to do the work, however, access to the training to do so is severely limited. Our answer is the Young Adult Empowerment Program (YAE). Creating credible messengers closer to the center mass of the age group that is driving some of society’s larger issues. A major component in harnessing this younger group is that their needs are sometimes as strong or stronger than the groups that they would work with. Led by our own credible messengers who have demonstrated that change is possible, we would be working to influence and shift their cultural value system. The inspiration and change we have already demonstrated has drawn young people seeking to leave their addiction to the street lifestyle behind to us like moths to a flame.

Civilization Research Institute

Executive Director — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 12:00:20 +0000

The Civilization Research Institute is a non-profit focused on advancing humanity’s collective intelligence. We believe that improving collective sensemaking — our ability to make sense of and understand the world — is a prerequisite for solving the urgent problems facing humanity.

Our first public project is The Consilience Project.

The Consilience Project is a digital media initiative that goes beyond and behind the news to provide consequential information about the world, and equips people with the evolving skills necessary to understand it. Our goal isn’t just to provide better information, but to help people to improve their own information processing so they can better detect bias and disinformation.

Inside Circle

Executive Director — Fri, 22 May 2020 12:00:37 +0000

Inside Circle has been working to shift how incarcerated individuals re-integrate into society. By developing new models and support systems are having powerful impact.

They provide impactful weekly peer support group circles and intensives within the prison system, focused on helping incarcerated men heal their trauma and take responsibility for their choices. Approximately 350 men have benefited from these groups and 60 now live free as peaceful, contributing members of society.

On the outside, they offer formerly incarcerated program participants vital connections through peer mentorship, education, facilitation training, and service opportunities. Their outreach programs enable graduates to act as advocates for the formerly incarcerated and to earn a living wage while bringing their hard-earned skills and wisdom to the public.

With the grant from The Rising Foundation’s they will be able to train more facilitators and expand a critical resource to reach more people and have a greater impact .