This week! I am thrilled to announce the launch of BRIDGE’s New Pathways series of talks and action-focused labs intended to seed an equitable and resilient future based on justice, healing, and transformation! We are sharing these short and accessible talks (produced by BRIDGE with Outpost Studios) with local and national leaders to support new forms of leadership and organizing during and post COVID-19. Topics include new ways to think about diversity, equity and inclusion, healthcare, financial health and literacy, resilience, mindfulness, belonging and more. My hope that this series will serve as both an oxygen mask during these challenging times as well as an opportunity to create new pathways in our hearts, brains, and (thereby) our work.
Why this particular series now?
In times of trauma, science tells us that it’s incredibly easy to go back to those habits that are familiar to us whether they serve us well or not. But the pandemic is demanding that we pause and take stock of our habits as individuals, family members, workers, leaders, policymakers, and investors/philanthropists and not go back to what wasn’t working for us anyway. This time is requiring that we stand strong and clear in our mutual vulnerability as well as our individual power and influence to catalyze well-being and systemic change. Now is a time for urgent response and intentional reflection. This series is meant to help you both respond and reflect. These talks are useful, inspiring, and healing! Rather than return to old pathways, we have the opportunity to seed and co-create a new future. We need people mobilizing, and we want folks to practice self and community care while embodying equity and justice. Now is a time to let go of past structures, and be courageous, generous, and vulnerable with each other.
Also, resourcing ourselves is more important than ever right now. We must draw on what we need from each other in our families, with our colleagues, in our communities, and even at the national level. In co-founding BRIDGE almost 12 years ago, I remember embarking on my own personal journey of healing. One of the “new pathways” of transformation that emerged for me at the time was BRIDGE coming into being, the way I helped it come into being, and everything that helped me make it happen. Now I want others to have similar resources, a toolkit if you will, to forge new pathways of their own. Every aspect of what I have brought along with me to steward BRIDGE into being and sustain BRIDGE’s mission… I want to share that with others, no matter your background or what role you hold in our community or yours.
With BRIDGE, my vision has always been community integration. We make integration possible by providing access to resources and information, creating new pathways to empowerment, and shedding light on invisible communities (and the structures that keep these communities invisible and under-resourced). Similarly, BRIDGE has always been about amplifying the voices and experiences of unheard and muted communities. With New Pathways, we are continuing to do this work that we’ve always done.
How did I choose New Pathways speakers?
All our New Pathways Talks and Labs speakers bring their own unique wisdom to the table and their messages are aligned with our core values at BRIDGE. Led primarily by my heart and gut, with deep listening, I also chose speakers who I perceive as being rooted and centered in their authentic truth. Their leadership emanates from a deep space of knowing their purpose. These are leaders who lean in to change with the resources they have to respond meaningfully during COVID-19 (and beyond).
Many of my friends have been grateful for the MasterClass offerings. Consider this New Pathways series a master class on equity and justice. I want every viewer to feel embodied in your power and your ability to be empathetic and compassionate while still being brave. My goal here with both New Pathways Talks and Labs is to help nourish you while imploring you to direct your compass forward. I invited speakers with this larger purpose in mind.
I want to thank everyone who has participated in our New Pathways series thus far. I am aware that folks have had to exercise another level of true commitment to humanity by jumping in and saying “yes”, creating the space and time to craft their message, and to be recorded in short order at a safe physical distance… I often speak about access to resources or lack thereof. We are all wealthy in some aspects and impoverished in others. So, whether it be your personal capital of wisdom, compassion, and knowledge, or the currency of your time or finances, I want to thank everyone who has shared what was most meaningful to them in contributing to this new body of work.
How do I hope you, the viewer and participant, will use New Pathways Talks and Labs?
Whether you are new to our work at BRIDGE or a longtime client or partner, my hope is that the free series of New Pathways Talks will be a useful resource to you and a virtual supplement to our core offerings. New Pathways Labs supplement specific talks, but also stand on their own. These cross-sector, action-focused conversations are an opportunity for authentic co-creation. Action plans and networking opportunities will naturally emerge. We will decide our new pathways forward together. Consider these labs an urgent response for emergent leadership!
As you watch, share, and participate in these conversations, I want to remind you, nothing about this time is transactional. This time is calling for intentional work towards transformation in our human behavior and how it impacts the health of the planet, our communities, and our collective future. It is time for a paradigm shift, including how we do this work of working together to share this New Pathways series and let these conversations shape our actions. Working from our hearts is the only way to do our work now. Love and deep care is the new currency. All currencies fall in line behind that one. We won't’ fix our problems any other way.
Please share these talks with others and if you appreciate this series, donate to BRIDGE.
We are living in a vulnerable time, and we must embrace this moment in all of its beauty with the courage that is required. I want to support people in getting clear about what hasn't served us and what won't serve us in moving into the future. I want to create new opportunities for listening. Let’s look around to see if everyone is truly at the table, and quite honestly, just create new tables and acknowledge all of the new and better tables people are building and have been building for some time. It is time!
How BRIDGE is responding to this time (including and beyond New Pathways)?
Despite what some folks have assumed, no, BRIDGE has not closed during this time and we are not closing. We have ramped up and are simply “come back to our center,” come back to the heart of who we are.
At our core is our Happiness Toolbox work, our women’s leadership work, and our racial justice and equity visions. The work of creating safety for us all and acknowledging the interconnectedness of us all. We will continue to serve as catalysts for integration. This is what BRIDGE is about. We’ll continue to build community courageously and boldly in a truly authentic sense. Our New Pathways series helps deliver on this mission, but is not the only we are delivering on our mission.
I always ask, who is BRIDGE accountable to? Who does BRIDGE belong to? And each time, without a beat, the answer is clear: our families, the women and children who are systemically and culturally most vulnerable... and, not only for the obvious reasons of “helping”; from my own deep knowing, I know that there is a direct line of wisdom, community care, and resilience that lives strongly and deeply among these families. This wisdom resonates with our own mission at BRIDGE. And for all these reasons, I’ve noticed during this time that in my daily work, there is so much less extraneous “noise”.
My team and I are clear. Game on. Our work continues on because it is needed now more than ever. The longer history of pandemics and economic depressions has shown us this arc before. As humans, we have evolved now though. We don't need to repeat history. It is time to heal as a society and planet. Now is the time to embody our values, be compassionate and empathic selves, and mobilize into action to disrupt power structures that have long existed and caused harm and left too many behind.
Check out our incredible line up of inspiring speakers here. Watch the trailer here.
Stay tuned for more New Pathways Talks and Labs throughout May and June! Full schedule to follow.
© 2020 Gwendolyn VanSant