Culture of Care
When we came across adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy in 2017, it resonated with our budding practices of experimentation. Since then, we’ve strengthened our experimentation muscle. Here are small-scale resilience practices that continue to move us towards being better, more connected, whole people.
Small-scale Resilience Practices
Protect Trust
Trust is an immensely valuable and fragile resource. We work to create and sustain a culture of trust at all levels of the Resist community. It makes our risk-taking possible, exciting, and safer. When a staff member says they need to go home early because their childcare fell through, we trust that. When a grant-making panel member misses a mandatory call, we trust they made the choice they needed to make for their well-being and check-in on them.
Make Our Work Human
Our covenant, or collection of agreements on how we are together, details how we make our work human. We work at a human pace. Our agendas are spacious. We support each other in prioritizing time for rest and activities that rejuvenate us. When we don’t do this, trust weakens, stress increases, and projects begin to struggle.
See Differences As Strengths
We acknowledge that privilege is real and believe having different identities, positions of power, and lived experiences in conversation which each other matters. When making important decisions at Resist, we include elders, grantees, board members, staff members, and others whose expertise and lived experience can give us necessary insight. This allows us to make smarter decisions and center frontline leadership.
Prioritize Healing and Trust Building
We start many of our meetings with meditations or other grounding activities. We also prioritize connecting and trust-building first by checking in with one another personally before jumping into work-related projects and topics. We understand that strengthening the “I” makes our collective “we” stronger.
By using these practices we became more connected, less reactive, and more open to the work of transformation. We practice a culture of collective care consistently and with integrity. It makes our work smarter and our organization stronger.
Read more about our Culture of Care below:
Become a Resister
Resist is a foundation that supports people’s movements for justice and liberation. We redistribute resources back to frontline communities at the forefront of change while amplifying their stories of building a better world.