Practicing the Future Now
New Seneca Village
Year Three Update
The work of transformational change has always required more labor and love than has ever been acknowledged. Over generations, the leaders and healers who have committed to advancing futures that work for everyone have generally been unsupported in creating their leadership in a way that will nourish and sustain them, as well as those they serve.
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Our societal systems and philanthropic structures have created a present in which many of the leaders that are crucial to our future end up leading from the edge of burnout and feeling as if they are persevering in isolation.
This is not the path to the collective future we all desire and deserve.
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This is not the way to access the creativity, clarity and sense of loving possibility that our collective future will require.
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This failure to see and resource our leaders will become even more stark
(and more consequential) as our societies grow in complexity and urgency,
and as they expand, for now, into more hatred and more cruelty.
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New Seneca Village is a love offering to the leaders
and healers that are holding
and have always held space for all of us.
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We invite you to join us in considering
how you might do the same.
Welcome
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This year we sharpened both our mission and vision for this work.
New Seneca Village is a space for centering intentional connection with self and others, restorative practice, collaborative thinking and partnership which will spark the
co-creation of new perspectives on, and approaches to how we Be free.
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The Village is a calling in of the collective future that includes all of us,
with space for all of our ways of being.
Mission
​New Seneca Village (Village) is a restorative residency experience that invites leaders and healers to access expansive resources (time, space, access to nature, restorative practices, intentional community and higher consciousness) for the sake of nourishing and sustaining their collective visioning for a just future.
Vision
We envision a world where all people have their needs abundantly met, their being-ness cherished and where they are able to choose work that allows them to explore their passion, creativity and self-expression.
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The vision above is a brief summary of the consistent visions shared by New Seneca Villagers. ​
Villager Reflections
The New Seneca Village Restorative Residency is an experience
that is both collective and unique to each Villager.
We are honored to hold an intentional container within which leaders and healers are able to access what is for
them to engage with, explore and remember for the sake of their leadership in life and work.
The Village experience is an invitation for each Villager to center their own curiosity and knowing. For this reason, every Villager experiences a distinct residency. ​
Read on to learn more about this Village offering
directly from Villagers thoughts and reflections.
Villager thoughts on the Overall Residency Experience
This residency has facilitated a turning point for me in how I value myself and the quality of life I desire. I have finally acknowledged how much time and space I need to actually care for myself and understand that care as part of my birthright. I also can no longer deny the role of spirit and ancestors in my journey, that I live in a synchronistic relationship with nature. This week taught me to listen to softer, quieter parts of myself.
I now better understand my relationship to grind culture: I was raised to be a commoner of capitalism and was praised for being able to navigate such face paced systems, and believed that since I was grinding for the movement, I wasn’t perpetuating capitalism.
I’m so curious about what might be on the other side of rituals of care and know that if I rely on my creativity and morning practices, I will find my way.
Celi, San Francisco Rising, Electoral Organizing,
Ramaytush Ohlone Land (San Francisco), spring 2024 leader
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Villager thoughts on Residency Elements
New Seneca Village is required for the liberation we are fighting for. Without the space, intention, and commitment to practice now the future we are building towards, we will never succeed.
The leaders at New Seneca Village each arrive with the vision for what is needed in our own leadership work, and through the emergent,
co-creative experience of the residency, we leave with a felt sense
of the just future we are creating together.
Dr. Teresa Laura, Vibrant Body Wellness, Healthcare and Wellness, Oakland CA. summer 2024 healer and Advisory Circle member
Villager Post Residency Reflections
Restoration, connection, and visioning will always be deeply embedded in my life because NSV reassured me and affirmed that the three are my birthright. I am allowed to restore because as I take pride in being abundant, this abundance requires replenishing. I must rest, I must take a break from doing, planning, circling back, and touching base, and simply be.
My style of leadership is a reflection of me, and my experience at New Seneca Village "validated" my leadership, how I do me, how I value and embrace freedom. Which is what I am always working and leading towards.
I am deserving of being well rested, well connected, and to dream and envision the life I want to live and lead. That is how I get myself and others free.
Mahogany, The Sis That Journals, Sector: Community Care, Louisville, KY. Summer 2024 leader
This year the Village hosted a 1/2 day convening
that explored,
Practicing the Future Now:
A Paradigm Shift for How We Create Change
Our orienting question for the philanthropic folks
who gathered with us:
How do you nourish and sustain your leadership
in the face of ever increasing
complexity and urgency?
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How does your funding nourish and sustain
the leaders advancing change in the world?
Village Snapshot: Year Three
In our first three years, we have welcomed in over 110 leaders and healers to
New Seneca Village and our restorative journey experience offering.
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New Seneca Village is multicultural, multi-generational and multi-gender.
New Seneca Village is cross-income, cross-sector and cross borders
- of the US, Canada and Mexico (for now).
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We welcome Villagers from across organizational hierarchy as we believe that centering restoration, connection and visioning is core to all leadership.
We are multi-generational
Villagers by Age
We are of multiple communities
Villagers by Orientation
We are cross borders
Villagers by geography
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Alabama
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California
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Canada
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Georgia
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Kentucky
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Maryland
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Massachusetts
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Michigan
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Minnesota
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Nevada
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New York
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North Carolina
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Pennsylvania
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South Carolina
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Washington
We are multi-racial
Villagers by race
We are cross-sector
Villagers advance change cross these issue areas and more in 2024
Our Village Funding Guide shares cumulative data about Villagers
over the past three years.
Learn more about the
Village team
and the
Village 2024 Advisory Circle
Village Financials
We are a fiscally sponsored project.
Our fiscal sponsor receives a 9% fee on all Village funds raised.
Deep Gratitude to our funders, Kataly Foundation and
You Have Our Trust Fund
who provide multi-year, general operating support grants with minimal reporting.
Your giving and
how you give allows us
to focus on stewarding this offering with more of our attention and intention.
Why Fund Restorative Residencies for Leaders and Healers
Each year we ask Villagers to share directly with funders about what it is important for funders to know about this work.
Read on for reflections from 2024 Villagers about the reasons for funding this work, including video shares from the convening.
For Potential Funders,
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We are clear that our Village offerings support the leaders and healers whose leadership is critical to creating change across the fields and sectors you fund within.
Learn more about how our work aligns with yours and how you can financially and relationally support the work of New Seneca Village in our Village Funding Guide.
The ripple effects of NSV may never be known, but could you imagine if more people in our everyday life could lean into a vision of wellness, abundance, love, and care?
Instead of fighting over scraps, we could be thought partners, collaborators, allies, and supporters. When people are given the permission and space to rest and dream, the potential is immense.
As an educator, I will carry these lessons forward with me into the classroom. And I hope my students can share with their circles. Instead of being zombies who burn out and stop doing the work of justice, we can keep living our fullest lives(with grace and forgiveness).
Yvonne Y. Kwan,
Asian American Studies,
San Jose State University,
CA Bay Area
To support our movement leaders, we must incorporate a different way of seeing what our work involves. Working for social justice requires a framework of healing justice in order to actually put in to practice what we are trying to achieve through our social justice work. Our leaders are burning out, leaving social justice movement work; our leaders are sick and dying.
The New Seneca Village residency offers a supportive opportunity for restorative connection and healing. It offers respite, learning, practice and integration for participants' lives and work to change forever; to move toward more restorative relationships.
Anna (AK) Meyer,
Formation Healing Arts,
Sector: Healing Justice,
Minneapolis (Southside), MN
Thank you. Thank you for believing that the exploitation, marginalization, persistent ongoing violence that women, and gender nonbinary folks, experience while existing matters. Thank you for believing that changing the world around us is possible especially when we come from a place that is resourced.
I am a visionary, I am a healer. I reach into the void of conflict and barriers daily and transform situations to create learning and intergenerational joy. It takes so much to do this while also nourishing my own recovery. Thank you for the moment to have my mind uninterrupted. It gave me a moment to have relief well up. It gave me a chance to rest my spine and feel my bare feet on the earth instead of running between meetings and on a computer. It was the pitstop I didn't know was needed so deeply until I did it. I'm grateful.
Please continue supporting this work and expanding it. It is going to have a ripple. I already feel it unfolding in my life in ways I've needed.
Dr. Anna,
Associate Professor,
CUNY,
New York City
Tine Lopes, Human Rights [4M]
Toronto, Canada
I don't know that there's anything more radical than that. To bring abundance to those of us who are constantly on the margins of a perilous society, and to teach us what happens when we say yes?
[it] is this profound organic depth of wisdom that brings into us insights and pleasure that could actually be the next Big Bang.​
The 'cost of caring' is real on our hearts, minds, bodies and spirits.
Having spaces like this is so critical to reminding us of the life saving need to PAUSE and step away from doing for and with others, so that we can 'be' with ourselves and others, in community, unburdening and resourcing ourselves, so that we can continue doing the work from a more grounded and expansive heart space.
Chris Leonard, Community Leader, Grief and Trauma, Toronto, Ontario, Canada [spring 2024]
I would like funders and donors to know that by funding the New Seneca Village, they are investing in the leadership and restoration of those of us who are committed to an equitable and just world.
We are visionaries, and innovators who are breaking many molds, and glass ceilings, and who have powerful voices -- and who may be just learning that rest is essential for us to continue to do this work, before 'burning out'.
I would like them to know that the work of the [the Village] is powerful, healing, and the best gift I've ever received.
Thank you for being part of that!
Blanca Olivia Hernández,
YES Nature to Neighborhoods,
Nature-Based
Leadership Development,
Ohlone Lands, Richmond, CA
Kayla Tolentino, 4M
Muwekma land, Sunnyvale, CA
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And the way that I would describe New Seneca village
is like they became a cocoon for me to change the shape that I was. To go back inside myself and to be at choice with the things that I want to leave in this world.
To recommit to my life, and why it's so important that I am here in our collective.
You can find more Villager shares in our Village Funding Guide.
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