Community Agreements

We ask that you hold these agreements during our time in Kenya and as we prepare for this journey, so that we can have a powerful, meaningful learning experience. What do these mean to you? Which one feels like it'll be the easiest? Which one feels like it'll be harder?

Listen with an open heart and mind

Be present

Feel all the feelings

Be a witness*

* Bearing witness is a concept that comes from psychology and some spiritual traditions. It’s likely that you do this often, for example, when a friend shares a painful story and you listen openly and empathetically. We bear witness to others whom we’ll never meet in person when we read their books, listen to their poetry, take in their art, music, movies and performances. In order to heal the wounds of humanity, we’ll need to witness each other’s pain and suffering. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and the author of Night, eloquently wrote, “For the dead and the living, we must bear witness.”

When you bear witness, you suspend habitual thinking and analysis and you acknowledge that something exists. You connect with a deep place of empathy and see a web of causes and conditions that create suffering—and you can take more effective action to stop that suffering. In bearing witness, you experience the interconnectedness of all beings.

Bearing witness is an act of great courage, for there may be times when you are called to witness unbearable suffering. In these pages, in your efforts to build equitable schools, allow yourself to be changed by what you witness—by what you witness in yourself, in others, and in your community. Witnessing can be excruciating and cathartic, and it can create a bridge for connection, healing and wholeness. Stay grounded in your purpose and intention—to build equitable schools—and hold space for your emotions. And turn to each other. Reach out and build connections to others. Our collective traumas happened in relationship to each other—our collective body as a species has been traumatized in the last 500 years. Our healing needs to happen in community. Reach for each other.