2021 in Review: A Year of Embracing Change
In 2020 Freedom Lifted had to halt all of our on-site trainings and civil rights trips due to the pandemic. And, now, seeing that as of January 2022, we are still in it, we’ve fully embraced creating spaces for social justice education online.
We look forward to being together again in person. But for now, we are thankful and a bit in awe at all that ways we've been able to use virtual spaces to engage with communities across the country.
Looking back...
This year we’ve grown our team of collaborators and expanded our offerings to train and support nonprofits, collectives, and other groups who seek to do their work with a social justice lens. Here are some of the highlights:
LEARNING LAB
Enrolled over 660 people in our Justice at Work online training which has received consistent 5-star reviews in less than a year since we made it public. This includes creating a custom course for Kalamazoo College (go Hornets!).
Launched a free History of Policing online course in our learning lab, designed for youth by a young leader, Syontoni Hattori-Chatterjee.
Developed digital materials to help anyone plan a group Civil Rights tour.
TRAININGS + WORKSHOPS
Facilitated 12 online debriefing sessions for groups enrolled in Justice at Work.
Hosted a Transformative Justice Summer Camp for Youth Activists using parts of the Transformative Justice Mixtape as our text and featuring Deana Lewis and Rachel Caidor from the Just Practice Collaborative as guest speakers. (Two of our youth participants created this podcast episode on Critical Race Theory as a result.) Thank you to all those who donated more than $7,000 to make this camp a reality.
Wrapped up an 8-part bilingual workshop series for hundreds of parent mentors on lessons in leadership from Black and Latinx feminist history in partnership with Hilda Franco and Convivir LLC. We are so excited to work again with the Parent Engagement Institute to offer another season of this amazing series. (These parents are on fire!)
Offered “Forever the Foreigner: A History of Anti-Asian Oppression and Resistance,” a workshop for youth and educators after the murders of Asian American women in the Atlanta area in March. This event was in collaboration with our co-conspirators at the Yuri Project.
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT
Secured $1.8 million in funding for a justice hub to incubate and provide fiscal sponsorship for social justice projects in Kalamazoo County, MI. We are so grateful to work with Bailey Mead, local activists, and the philanthropic community in my beloved Kalamazoo to launch this effort.
Led an in-depth curriculum review for emerging nonprofit leaders. Our work with the ONEPlace@kpl Nonprofit Leader Academy included facilitating staff retreats, interviewing alumni, and gathering survey data to provide a report of recommendations to make the program explicitly antiracist and rooted in racial justice.
Facilitated strategic clarity retreats for social movement organizations including Title Track, Love + Protect and Press On.
Looking ahead...
As educational travel slowly returns, our final two civil rights tours for the foreseeable future will be with two 8th grade classes this spring from Edmund Burke School and the San Francisco School. Since Mia made an argument for why every 8th grade trip should be to Alabama, we can’t think of better partners with whom to wrap up this work.
In 2022, Freedom Lifted will continue to ground our practice in movement history as we focus on more justice+equity trainings, facilitation, and coaching. We are looking forward to supporting more organizations and social justice leaders as they build collaborative teams and shift organizational culture.
To complement this vision, we plan to offer even more free political education tools for youth and adults through our Learning Lab.
Thank you for all of your support throughout the year and for sticking with us as we evolve to meet the call of the times.