HOME Jam for Environmental and Climate Leaders: “Healing our Movement Ecosystem

Apply today!  

Priority deadline : March 1, 2024

Final deadline April 1, 2024

HOME Jam 2024 Invitation

The HOME Jam brings together 30 environmental changemakers from diverse backgrounds, passions, ages, and regions for 5 days to practice building a beloved community and sharing our gifts and visions with one another. Since 2013, the HOME Jam has woven the journeys of hundreds of leaders from across the environmental and climate movements, strengthening the synergistic ecosystem of our sector. As we emerge from the pandemic lockdown into a world in crisis, this first in-person HOME Jam in 5 years will be a powerful opportunity to connect, cross-pollinate, and dream into being the regenerative world we know is possible. 

We invite you as a passionate player in the climate/environmental justice movement to slow down, step away from your desk, breathe, vision, and realign with your whole self so you may shine even brighter within your work.

Let’s practice being the healing we wish to see in the world.

Why Gather? Why Now?

The related pressures on our environmental and social systems are unprecedented and intensifying. Climate chaos is raging at home and impacting relatives around the world, and the sixth mass extinction is well underway – there is so much to grieve, and to fight for. 

Yet, some of the same hyper-capitalist and separatist ideologies that hurt the Earth’s living systems are also fragmenting our movement cultures. Listening across the environmental sector, our stories reveal common challenges: lack of time, lack of trust, overstretched capacities, and competition for limited resources. This context has led to tragic misunderstandings, infighting, disenchantment, and burnout – all threatening the viability of our movement as a whole.

Awareness is growing. Folks are recognizing the need to “move at the speed of trust,” build bridges across lines of difference, and nurture cultures of belonging. These strategies are not secondary “soft skills,” but serve as a crucial foundation for our movement’s vitality. This is where the HOME Jam comes in.

The Purpose of the HOME Jam

The “Healing our Movement Ecosystem” Jam for Environmental and Climate Leaders is co-organized by a diverse group of changemakers working in service of environmental justice, with the support of YES! The Jam is about fostering a culture that empowers deep belonging with ourselves, eachother, and the earth.

The Jam alchemizes three interconnected levels of transformation, all in service to embodying beloved community:

→ As Individuals: Receive Rejuvenation – We create space for restoration, healing, and inspiration to nurture the transformative potential in our own projects. We are invited to take off our masks, seek our next growing edge, and connect our minds, hearts, and spirits in service to our work.

→ As a Community: Build Solidarity– We build a fire to forge strong relationships. Through exercises designed to stretch our comfort zone, we discover common ground and celebrate differences. By taking an honest look at our conflicts, we seek to move beyond collaboration and allyship towards deep friendships that will sustain us over the long term. As articulated by our elder Joanna Macy: the point of this work is not to save the world, but to ensure that as the world falls apart, we don’t turn on each other.

→ As a Movement: Foster Collective Liberation. We critically examine the tools and lenses we apply in our work in order to decolonize our imaginations. We examine the ways in which our individual liberation is contingent on the liberation of the whole, and vice versa. We learn practices we can bring home to transform the cultures of our organizations and coalitions.

What is a Jam?

In music, a jam is a creative, live gathering of musicians who come together to create an emergent new sound, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, YES! jams are places where diverse leaders and visionaries bring together their passion, unique perspectives, and open hearts to heal fractions and build radically inclusive communities. To date, more than 200 jams have been held across 85 nations across six continents, forging connections to last a lifetime. 

The Jam is about fostering a culture that empowers deep belonging with ourselves, eachother, and the earth. We get to collaboratively imagine and live into the practice of a beloved community. Within the dance between structure and emergence, we have the opportunity to show up authentically and generously with loving attention and creative gifts to embody the healing we wish to see in the world. As one of our participants Nadir reflected, “The Jam is where I learned the art of the collective, and the compounded power of healing and transformation as a collective.”

How is the Jam structured? What will we be doing?

A jam is not a conference, seminar, or a typical meeting.. Together we will explore our seed questions through facilitated dialogue, visioning exercises, sharing circles, collective ritual, artistic expression, hilarious games, participant-led workshops, outdoor adventure, space for solo reflection, and intentional free time for spontaneous magic making.

Unlike the focus of many of our day jobs, in the Jam we will not attempt to solve the world’s problems or any one programmatic outcome (number of trees planted, policies enacted, technologies invented). Rahter, we will make space for slowing down, for being and belonging, to heal from burn out. We will practice building a community that moves at the speed of trust; forming relationships, synergies, and partnerships with other parts of the movement ecosystem that will last long after the jam when we return to the office..

Who is invited?

We are looking to create a community of practitioners from across the environmental movement. In addition, to leverage the movement-building impact of the Jam, we encourage applicants to identify other individuals and organizations with whom you would like to collaborate more effectively, and encourage them to apply as well.

We look for diversity across:

Livelihoods & Perspectives: foresters, clean energy engineers, food justice advocates, social entrepreneurs, environmental lawyers, policy wonks, members of communities affected by environmental racism, conservation biologists, community organizers, sustainable tech designers, and anyone who wants to be the change in how the environmental movement operates.

Identities & Worldviews: class, race, religion, sexuality, gender, dis/ability, ethnicity, etc.

Age & Experience:  intergenerational participation, approximately between the ages of 20 and 70.

Dates & Venue

Dates: Sunday May 26th – Friday May 31st, 2024

Location: The Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, California. Located 90 minutes south of San Francisco in the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains, the Quaker Center is a serene and magical retreat space away from the hustle and bustle of modern life.

Contribution

Sliding Scale $300 – $1200

It requires resources to put together this event, in terms of organizing and facilitation time. The at-cost price per person for this Jam is $1050. Broken down, $525 of that covers food, our chef, lodging, and supplies, and the other $525 covers honoraria for the organizers and facilitants. We offer tiered pricing based on each applicant’s financial situation.

We encourage applicants to seek support from their organizations. Many participants have been able to receive professional development funds, knowing they will bring back learnings and tools to their organizations.

We recognize even the low end of our sliding scale may still be a significant expense for many people, and we do not want money to be an impediment to your participation. Please let us know your needs.

And, if you are in a position to contribute more, wonderful! The extra amount will go towards our scholarship pool for those in need.

Please feel free to contact us at <homeecojam@gmail.com> if you have any queries. We look forward to hearing from you!

Apply today!  

Priority deadline : March 1, 2024

Final deadline April 1, 2024

With gratitude for who you are and all you do,

Avi, Jodi, Kyle, Nadir, and Shilpa