SOMASOURCE

Dear SomaSource Student Colleagues:

Thank you for those who participated in the Social Justice informational meeting that Golden Bridge hosted via Zoom on July 8th, 2020. We are grateful that you took time to listen to some of the Golden Bridge story over the past many seasons and for all the voices that showed up in this ongoing conversation. These times are ripe with possibility for ever more clarity, consciousness, and care for one another as we deepen our understanding for each other and strengthen our community web.

Following the July 8th meeting, Golden Bridge organized a Sociocracy training for our core team along with core representatives from the Social Justice Advisory Team and Golden Girls Global. The training gave us a rubric for exploring inspiring and integral ways to share leadership and empower more voices. We hope to find ways to share the Sociocracy model with the larger community in the new year. Step-by-step, we are implementing this inclusive model of leadership in our organizational structure and the SomaSource in the World initiatives emerging from the Golden Bridge hub.

We were able to put some of these new concepts and skills into practice by hosting a rich process dedicated to reviewing your feedback in a meeting held on August 10th, 2020. Again, our Golden Bridge Center working circle along with four representatives from the Social Justice Advisory Team were involved in the reviewing of feedback. In response, we have designed a long-term and short-term plan of action to address some of the relevant issues raised.

We now have a trajectory of longer arching themes that we are committed to working with, although they have no immediate easy “fix.” We also have a plan for some simple and clear next steps. We are planning on taking the following steps in the coming year:

1. Feedback:

1. Expand our Contact Us page to make the feedback channel more inviting. Add a link to the feedback form to the GB homepage or otherwise make it more accessible.
2. Clarify who in Golden Bridge looks at feedback and our response process. Design a system to ensure that folks know we have received their feedback.
3. Create more channels for feedback and learning together, ever safer spaces for truth-telling. Empowering all voices to be validated and heard.
4. Create an email for the Social Justice team directly which will review all emails on a monthly basis. Create a clear pathway for feedback for anyone who may not feel safe going directly to the center of the organization.
5. Continue to have a Feedback Basket at all in-person events for immediate feedback. Needs to be presenced consistently at events.

2. Organizational Access and Transparency

1. Completed Action: Create a Golden Bridge Organizational Chart for SomaSource students.
2. Completed Action: Melissa has created a video addressing nuanced topics and questions, in particular in relationship to Golden Bridge’s money history, pedagogy, and potential future. If this is a topic of interest to you, please take 22 minutes to watch here.
3. Expand on the Social Justice Advisory Team section of the website to include names, structure for gathering and a direct email for communication.
4. Continue to cultivate innovative and inclusive pathways for transparent and sustainable economic dynamics within Golden Bridge.

3. Accessibility and Justice

1. Continue to build upon the Social Justice Series. For 2020-2021 and beyond, create opportunities for consistent Caucus work.
2. GB will hire an outside trainer/consultant around issues of ability and accessibility. This will be a part of our 2020/2021 Social Justice Series.
3. Encourage the community to include their gender pronouns with their names on large zoom meetings.

We are also dedicated to this community of learners’ development not only as activists but also to our personal and collective healing. We are working to support each individual’s psycho-spiritual development and healing. We have a support team dedicated to holding space for the personal shadow work and unwinding of trauma that goes hand in hand with how we relate to the collective.

This is an emergent conversation – the edge of our own evolution as lifelong learners. We are committed to living in the tension. The work is never done.

Thank you for joining us in this conversation. We welcome your feedback via our Contact Us form or via email.

With care,

Your GB Center Working Circle ~ Melissa, Maren, Abigail, Sarita with Ramon as the double link to the Social Justice Leadership Team.

September 2020