Bringing Together Diverse Perspectives
“The geographical, professional, cultural, religious and ethnic diversity [of my retreat] really helped me see the blind spots and margins of my work . . . where I can grow and meet others.” -- 2006 retreat participant
Please read our organizational statement on land, race, class and privilege
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The staff and board of Whole Communities work hard to create a safe space where people with very different perspectives and views can have honest and sustained dialogue with one another. We believe that great change begins between people, within communities, and across a nation when, as one participant said, “I tell you who I am and you tell me who you are.”
The retreats allow diverse people to come together and hear one another’s stories while working through the tensions that are created by divides. We endeavor to ensure that each retreat’s teachers and participants reflect the true diversity of those working in careers connected to land and community in America, whether that diversity be cultural, racial, professional or otherwise.
We recognize that our capacity to help people practice “whole thinking” depends entirely on the trust that we build and the diversity of people who come to our retreats. More than one-third of our retreat fellowships go to people of color, and we work hard to ensure that participants in each retreat feel as though they have a cohort present with whom they can identify professionally, culturally, or in terms of background. Individual participants are never expected to “represent” a group, whether that group be the organization they work for, the ethnic group with which they identify, a religion, or a sector.
While attention is paid to the challenges created by divides during the retreats, we focus equally on the bonds and necessities that hold us together. We aspire to help build a shared vision for an emerging future that depends on us. What is emerging from this work is a new leadership for the land community that acts with more wisdom, more collaboration, and more commitment to creating change.
As an organization committed to addressing issues of race, power and privilege in our work and to the process of dismantling oppression, we continually strive to ask better questions of ourselves and our participants, not to assume we have answers.
Learn more about how we select fellows to invite to the retreats.