2022 Evolving & Emerging Economies Jam
The many entangled crises of the past several years have cracked open, electrifying new possibilities, perspectives and insights for alternative ways forward, and have further revealed to us the dark underbelly of oppressive and dominant systems. Nowhere is this perhaps more visible than in our economic systems.
About a year into the pandemic, a few YES! Jam alumni began to collaborative-sense that this present moment could offer us powerful opportunities to envision and re-imagine diverse ecosystems of economies during these troubled times. After many months of dreaming, sharing, and strengthening our relationships, we are thrilled to invite you into this powerful space of magic, joy, honesty, exploration and co-creation at the next Evolving & Emerging Economies Jam!
When and where is the Evolving & Emerging Economies Jam?
Monday, September 19th – Saturday, September 24th 2022
We’ll gather ONLINE from our distinctive places around the world.
Timing: 9-11:30 am PST / 12-2:30 pm EST / 4-6:30 pm GMT / 9:30 pm to 12 am IST
What is a YES! Jam?
Each YES! Jam brings together approximately thirty outstanding human beings for a week of learning and unlearning, skills sharing, experimentation and community building. YES! Jams create transformative fields of shared inquiry in which leaders deepen the root system behind the commitments, prayers, and actions that move through their lives. Jam community members are potent and dedicated multigenerational social change leaders across 85+ nations. They support one another and collaborate together on-goingly long after the Jam, sustaining themselves for a lifetime of service to the world.
The Jam works on 3 three levels:
- On the personal level, it is an open space for participants to reflect on our life journeys and on what makes us who we are today. It is an opportunity to deepen our purpose, ask meaningful questions, unlearn our fears and blocks, access our hearts, guts and body wisdom, and open our minds to move more boldly in the world.
- On the interpersonal level, we come together to share our cultures, our creativity, our collaborative spirits, our stories and our struggles so we can deepen in our understanding of, and connection to, each other. We learn vital ways of working through conflicts so they move from breakdowns into breakthroughs.
- On the systemic level, we become clearer about the importance of our work in the world and its potential for even deeper, more meaningful impact. We vision and dream and connect our hopes and aspirations for the world we want to see.
What is the Evolving & Emerging Economies Jam?
The Evolving & Emerging Economies (EEE) Jam came to life about 10 years ago when a diverse group of economy-based changemakers came together in California, USA. Since then, the EEE Jam has happened five times (2013, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018), bringing together economy visionaries, movement builders, organizers, impact investors, time bankers, social entrepreneurs, and more, for a week of deep listening, sharing, self discovery, systemic inquiry and true community building.
This year, for the first time ever, the EEE Jam will happen online over six days, offering the opportunity for folks all over the world to participate. We aspire for it to be a space of deep connection and trust for us to share our stories, hopes and fears, in which we can envision and embody economies that are generative, learningful and life-giving.
Why are we calling the Evolving & Emerging Economies Jam?
We wish to envision and live into new ways of relating to one another, the more-than-human and natural worlds and the planet as a whole. We have a vision of liberation for all people through economic relationships based on love, care and reciprocity. We recognize that we need to hone the skills of holding paradox and contradiction with compassion. In the co-creation of this Jam we have acknowledged that systemic economic problems are big and complex, that we feel so stuck sometimes, that global levels of inequality are deplorable AND, simultaneously, we know that holiness, magic, fun, play and friendship can be present in the worlds we are longing for and already creating.
The EEE Jam will be a gathering to cultivate solidarity, relieve feelings of isolation, and connect with others doing experiments related to money, exchange, business, gift culture and an ecology of different currencies. We aspire to co-create a space where we can explore a wide range of practices, questions, systems and ideas, like:
- How are you living the values and world you are trying to create?
- How does your love for the world impact the direction of your work?
- How are you creating and implementing your systems and visions of economy?
- How can we collaborate around social entrepreneurship with a quadruple bottom line?
- How do we see trauma, healing and spirituality as interacting with our economies, both mainstream and alternative?
- How might we experiment with new agreements for ease and flow in our interchanges?
- What might exploring our personal money stories offer us by way of un-learning and up-learning, for our visions of economies?
- How might we imagine economies in which time is not a scarce resource?
What concrete, local experiments are we engaging in, and how can we share them with each other and make them more visible? - How do we navigate our shame around money?
- What methods of exchange are in alignment with the needs of our environment and human community? What is our role in facilitating that exchange?
- How does justice intersect with building and maintaining wealth?
- What can we create together right here and now?
What questions are alive in you? Won’t you join us on this emergent and evolving adventure?
Why now?
Our current moment both reveals the urgency and profound need for explorations about the way that we are relating to one another and the planet, particularly when it comes to money, wealth distribution, economic systems that value profits over people and their lives… AND it ALSO offers us incredible opportunities to imagine and experiment with a multiplicity of different ways of being in relationship with money and with one another. Dominant systems of oppression are cracking open and breaking down, allowing us to envision new and different futures. We can feel that this is a time ripe with possibility to explore and experiment with emergent economies.
Who is this for?
This Jam is for folks who are invested in and working towards re-imagining and transforming our economies in some way and who crave community and support on their journeys. If you are collaborative, curious, imaginative, have as much interest in the internal as the external, and are ready to connect with others who are transforming and creating alternative economies, this might be the Jam for you.
We aspire to bring together a widely diverse group of people who are involved in various fields of work, practice and experimentation. This includes, and is not limited to, and in no particular order:
- individuals working with mutual aid networks
- folks from all different class backgrounds
- small business owners
- fundraisers
- philanthropists
- economists
- social entrepreneurs and business people
- time bankers
- solidarity organizers
- leaders (and members) of economic justice networks
- folks experimenting with: creative economies, cryptocurrencies, impact investing, local currencies, sharing and gift economies, gross national happiness and sacred economics.
- folks engaging in barter, intentional exchange or conscious consumption,
We extend a special invitation to past Jammers worldwide who are working with or interested in business and economies or how these topics intersect with initiatives they steward. Our hope is that the EEE Jam will involve people with a wide range of experience in terms of leadership, areas of interest / practice, identity and worldview, scope and scale of work, geographic location.
More on Dates, Timing, Logistics and Application
The 6th YES! Evolving + Emerging Economies Jam will take place from Monday, September 19 to Saturday, September 24, 2022. The sessions are from 9 am-11:30 am PST / 12-2:30 pm EST / 4-6:30 pm GMT / 9:30 pm – 12 am IST, on Zoom. You are welcome to join from anywhere in the world! This time includes group sessions as well as informal hangout time.
There will also be lots of opportunities for asynchronous connecting in one-on-ones, small groups, participant-led sessions, and more. The more space you have, the more you will be able to JAM. Please leave time for yourself to JAM this week.
Note: We do ask that all participants attend all five sessions and do their best to leave more time and space during the rest of the week for more participation. Also, please note there will be no fixed session on Thursday, September 22nd; this will be a day for space for rest, integration, and even more participant-led sessions.
We offer the Jam on a sliding scale of $100-$400, and ask you to contribute what you can. We never want money to be a barrier in participating, so we will do everything we can to make it work for you to attend. YES! also offers a monthly payment plan option to help each person figure out an economic agreement that works best for them.
Additional donations above the cost are welcome and help us to provide scholarships to support others in attendance (they are also tax-deductible).
If available, we encourage you to access your institution/organization’s professional development budget to help to cover some of these costs. After you apply to the Jam, if you like, we can share with you a customized letter that focuses on the professional-development benefits of the Jam that you can then share with your institution/employer.
Our final application deadline was September 1, 2022, and we have received a record number of applications and have a substantial waiting list for this Jam. To be notified about the next Jam, please send us a message at <eeejam.yes {at} gmail.com>. Thanks!
What have previous participants said about the EEE Jam?
“This is the most I have felt ‘myself’ in a group setting, as the flow allowed me to open and be vulnerable. When you allow yourself to be open, you are more aware and honest about yourself… I feel I have a renewed perspective and sense of purpose with both life and work.”
– Ron Cariño, 32, Co-founder and Executive Director, Soulciety, Hayward, CA,
“It felt to me like we spent the majority of the time connecting around the ‘people that we are’. It is certainly important to know the work that we each do and I appreciate that there was time to learn that over the course of our time, but I further understand now that it’s that “people that we are” connection that has the potential to serve each of us so much more deeply… The EEE Jam affirmed for me that love is integral to the Shift. Really listening to understand, not just to respond, and that takes time and attention.”
– Yavette Holts, 50, Founder, Cowrie Village: Barter to the People, Berkeley, CA
“The alchemy of what we created has helped me become unstuck and also given me invaluable tools for my tool-belt. I understand now that the new economy is built on, and in fact, is, love, kindness, authentic vulnerable connection, exquisite self-care, right relationship, and working together as community — strengthened by the support and bonds of community. I feel like you helped remove the veil from my eyes and reminded me of my true purpose in this world which is to walk and act in love, kindness + my truth, and have faith that this will carry me through in the most beautiful of ways.
– Nika Ridley, 40, writer & permaculture practitioner, Graton, CA, USA
“I am in a moment in life where this Jam was a life saver. Carrying so much for a loved one who is healing from significant trauma has depleted me. It’s only in conditions like the Jam — intentional, caring, loving — that we both thrive. There is too much pain in the current world + economy to carry it alone or with one other person. The love and relationships leave us in a stronger, healthier place to take care of ourselves and continue the work of building cooperative, loving economies.”
– Al Basile, 32, co-founder, Tightshift Laboring Cooperative, Washington, DC, USA
Who is hosting:
Organizer
Ayşegül Güzel Berges del Arco these days is practicing seeing life as an infinite mystery rather than wishing it was easier and different.
She is a social entrepreneur, community facilitator, social change & social tech enthusiast, data scientist, and sound therapist.
She has worked in different parts of the world within various cultures (fashion companies, marketing agencies, innovation consultancies, alternative economies, self-sustained communities, and social entrepreneurship networks). In addition, she worked across multiple business areas (strategic planning, product management, innovation consulting, community facilitation, content creation, e-commerce building, and data science) in global corporations and as an entrepreneur.
After creating one of the critical time bank experiments in the world and experimenting with sustainable models around e-commerce and creative economies, she is still in the field of exploration for the definition of the economy where she can feel realized and at peace with her actions.
She was born in Anatolia and is now living in the south of Spain. She calls her husband and two kids, singing and playing her oud as the source of her everyday magic.
Aerin Dunford is many things: writer, upcycling artist, urban gardener and yoga instructor. She is also a process consultant at Coquixa Consultores using El Arte del Liderazgo Participativo (Art of Hosting) and other participatory approaches as a basis for her work with organizations and groups of all kinds. Aerin believes that meaningful connection and relationship-building is possible across distance and difference. In these times of much complexity and fear, she feels it is so important that folks around the world come together in new ways to explore an ecosystem of economic approaches and new ways of being in relationship with one another, not only to give us hope and inspiration but to remember that we are not alone in all this – we have each other.
Aerin is also the Chief Basketweaver at The Emergence Network, a translocal community of postactivists posing questions such as: what if the way we respond to the crisis is part of the crisis?
Since the death and stillbirth of her son in 2018, Aerin has been called to work with grief in new ways; she has been reflecting, writing and convening others to metabolize loss together. You can read some of these musing on her blog, In the Name of Rafa.
Rose Slam! Johnson wants you to have fun. This connoisseur of play, depth, and trying new things, brings over a decade of experience as a serial entrepreneur, compassionate communication practitioner, and summer-camp-for-lifer.
Slam! is often recognized for being wildly attentive to detail, dancing the line between lightness and depth, and bridging the gap of separation.
Slam! is a coach for Queer Small Business Owners (nimblerootscoaching.com), managers the operations on a sociocratic governed tech platform team (hylol.com), and offers trainings and bookkeeping services. Slam! offers workshops on finance, communication, and fun. Some of the workshops include the Money Club ( a monthly session on financial literacy and support), Energy of Money Book Study, and Love Your Money Coaching Group (ok, this one hasn’t launched yet, but it is coming soon!) Slam! is constantly building a net of community around economics, money, and liberation. Keep your eyes out for an invite to the Queer Business Center + the networking events that come out of it.
As adults, we may have been trained to rein in our silly sides. The most vulnerable thing for us just might be to let loose and play a little. With Slam!, all you have to do is show up and join the game.
Dail Chambers is a post medium, creative being. Dedicated to the positive transformation of self and place, Chambers has initiated and maintained spiritual and wellness centers, art galleries and temporal spaces across the Mid and Deep South.
Shilpa Jain is currently rooting herself in Oakland/Berkeley, CA. For 11+ years, she served as the Executive Director of YES!, working with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change, and aiming to co-create thriving, just and balanced ways of life for all. Prior to taking on this role, Shilpa spent two years as the Education and Outreach Coordinator of Other Worlds and ten years as a learning activist with Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development, based in Udaipur, India, where she served as coordinator of the Swapathgami (Walkouts-Walkons) Network. She has facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings with hundreds of young leaders from over 50 countries. She is passionate about dance and music, organic and natural farming, upcycling and zero waste living, asking appreciative questions and being in community. A focus on healing, forgiveness, compassion, love and wholeness permeates all of her work and life.
Joy George, born and raised in the Bronx as the daughter of Nigerian diaspora, has found herself at the intersections of love, transformation, restoration and social change in her work and activism. A graduate of NYC Public Schools and Swarthmore College now working in the state of Maine at Mindbridge and the Restorative Justice Institute of Maine, she is working towards planting and watering the seeds of restorative culture. After serving as a counselor at Seeds of Peace International Camp in the summer of 2019, Joy attended the 2019 North American Leadership Jam and found herself blessed with radical healing, truth and community– and now she is back again for more!
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