Leadership Theory to Practice

INVST has been a major part of my leadership experience. INVST is a two-year leadership program that is dedicated to forming community leaders in social and environmental justice. During our first year, we go over how to facilitate and how to fundraise. Fundraising was of key importance our first year because we were fundraising to go on our social justice trip during the summer. Due to COVID, we weren't able to have a first-year trip which was very disappointing, so it was essential to all of us that we got the required funds to be able to have an educational justice trip throughout Colorado and New Mexico.

Sub-committees were formed in order to raise more funds, my committee and I decided to host an online webinar event. Which my mentor and friend Soraya hosted. Our overall mission of this event was to have a conversation about the decolonization in ourselves and the natural environment. Despite the uncertainty of webinar assistance, we managed to get a handful of people to come to join us. As Soraya brought in her connections and we brought ours. It turned out to be such a much-needed grounding/knowledgable event for all those in assistance. Soraya lead us through a conversation about decolonization in ourselves and for a portion touched on decolonizing with the natural environment, then moved us into her yoga practice and closed with a grounding meditation/visualization with the natural environment and ourselves. She navigates the ways she herself has learned aerobic and power yoga in the West and works to make her classes a balance of valuing exercise in the physical body but challenging the Western appropriation of yoga and centering our breath, decolonizing yoga’s roots, and dismantling white supremacy. Her Vinyasa and Asana practice engages students to reflect on their own commitments to waking up in a more just world and encourages us each to dream and act deliberately towards love, justice, and liberation.

An event that took months to prepare came together perfectly! It was an incredible event as those who assisted left with powerful knowledge and skills to put into practice. As for ourselves, we left with a great sense of pride to be able to gift this event to others in a time of need and help them connect to themselves and disconnect from the anxieties of COVID, to have put our leadership skills to the test and put this incredible event together and co-facilitate easily, and not to mention surpassing our fundraising goal!

Facilitation is an art of story-telling. Storytelling is one of the most important concepts of leadership. As stories bring people together whether that comes from connection or whether it comes from empathy. Without storytelling, people would've been drawn to specific causes. A story-based strategy is a participatory approach that links movement building with an analysis of narrative power and places storytelling at the center of social change (Intro to Story-Based Strategy) (more info.). In order for people to be drawn into an event let alone a webinar, there has to be a story worth listening to. Especially if that event is a fundraiser. For my sub-committee and me, storytelling was fundamental to our mission. And with that mission, there is a strategy we had to incorporate. Not only did we want to tell a story, but we also wanted the audience members to see their own story within the discussion and see how it resonated with them.

To build off that, the skills I used within this process were looking within, grounding, empathy, awareness of bias, listening, and connection/relationship-building to bring people together and form relationships with the people in attendance. Next time, I would want to have more dialogue within the discussion that is being held. I did a good job of hosting but I would've liked to have more dialogue throughout the conversation.