North America Leadership Jam 2024
Final Deadline – February 24th, 2024
or until last few spots are filled.
The North America Leadership Jam brings together 30 changemakers from across North America (Canada, Mexico, the US, and the Caribbean) for a seven-day deep dive, exploring the connections between self-awareness, group evolution, and systemic change. The Jam brings together activists and world changers of all kinds to co-create the experiences of the new world we want to build together. We gather to grow internally, build community and discover collective ways to move towards transformative change. We also gather to have a ton of fun, make art, and reconnect with nature and our spirits. It’s a unique blend of personal recharge and deep exploration into how we can reshape the world.
WHO COMES TO A JAM?
Changing the world means many things – from parenting conscious and empowered kids to front-line activism to spiritual practice to leading organizations. All of these are needed to create the world we know is possible. The time to meet and co-create with different kinds of changemakers is one part of the magic of the Jam. If you are willing to ask big questions and hold paradox with an open, loving heart, you are invited to apply.
THIS TIME IN THE WORLD
This last year so much of the world has experienced deep ruptures and new openings.
On the one hand, all the division, the pain and loss due to dominant/authoritarian political structures and governments that don’t center humanity; media sphere, corporations, AI, generational conflict, and systems that are falling apart. What do we believe now and how do we relate to this world? There is chaos.
On the other hand, this is causing a shift in the international realm, Movements for democracy and climate solutions are gaining strength. People see the crisis and realize that now is the time to ask fundamentally different questions and create true transformation. This means there is will, curiosity and deep knowledge in local communities to make it different, if we dare to open the spaces for it.
The Jam is one of those spaces. A practice of deep listening to the heart, to hear the cracks in the system and the ones within ourselves, an invitation to connect beyond judgments and labels, to share and understand for each one of us and as a collective. In the Jam, we have learned that when we come from a place of curiosity and deep listening, a place of joy, play and commonality, we can show up with ourselves and with each other. When we stand in this here and now, in full presence, then we can listen to life and open space to imagine new routes, to create what we didn’t think was possible before.
The Jam takes a stand to bear witness to multiple truths and explore together not as a philosophical debate but as an embodied experience on new invitations to live the questions with every part of the self, body, mind and spirit, at the personal, interpersonal and systemic levels.
In Japanese, the concept of crisis means not just chaos but opportunity. In the Jam, we believe this is our chance and our opportunity to ask the right questions,
Are you:
- Making sense of the world and figuring out what comes next for your change-making work?
- Struggling to find balance and regenerative pathways of wellness for yourself,your community, and your ecosystem?
- Longing to challenge the silos and polarization and seeking to build bridges across divides, both within and across relationships and communities?
- Feeling a desire to connect with your purpose, power, passions, and privileges for your next level of contribution?
- Overwhelmed with options and not sure how to create the change you want to see in the world effectively?
- Wondering how to deepen your understanding of positive impact and what that means in these trying times?
- Seeking a healthy relationship with your gifts, skills, and resources to expand and unleash them?
- Interested in shedding guilt and paralysis and ready to bring yourself in greater alignment with your values?
- Looking for a community of people who are living and exploring the same questions?
- … fill in the blank and bring forth the questions that are alive for you….
If you feel the calling, come and join us…Let’s Jam!
WHAT DO WE MEAN BY “JAM”?
A Jam is not a conference, it is not a training, and it is not a typical gathering. Through 34 years of YES! gatherings, diverse groups from all over the world have co-created exceptional methods for community building and stretching our understanding of the world. Those are the foundation of the Jam, but we will not have a rigid agenda. Instead, we will draw from all of your applications to find the themes, questions, and wisdom that everyone at your jam will bring. We put them all in a big pot, stir them around and see what comes out! From there, we make a draft flow of facilitated activities, but that always changes depending on what is alive in the present moment.
Each Jam is a unique group of people. We put the wisdom of the group at the center of the Jam, not the agenda, and we are led by the evolving energy of the group day to day. That is why we call it a Jam. Whatever happens, we always mix in plenty of down time, dance time, hike time, silence time, food time, and rest time.
We will not have typical facilitators, as the facilitation team will also be participating in full – as “facilitants” (facilitator-participants). None of us come with all of the answers. Instead, we will co-create the space together — using circles, conversations, spiritual practice, artistic expression, silence, and play — to explore our questions, bring more of our whole selves, and live into our answers and new questions (!), using the depth and power of the experiences and knowledge in the room. The role of the facilitants is to nurture the space, to set the tone by how we participate, and to support every participant.
METHOD & VALUES OF YES! JAMS
“Hurt people hurt people, and create systems that hurt people.
Healing people heal people, and create systems that heal people.”
We recognize the inextricable linkages between the way we care for ourselves, the way we care for each other, and the systems we create as changemakers. To that end, YES! Jams focus on the relationships between three interdependent levels of awareness:
PERSONAL
The Jam is a place to share and reflect on your life journey and your work in the world. It is also an opportunity to grow in self-knowledge. Personal health, living creatively, and slowing down are the roots of building a thriving world. So, the Jam has a lot of time dedicated to renewing and recharging. We live in the Redwood forest, eat fantastic food, and have time to rest.
INTERPERSONAL
We come together to deepen our understanding of each other and of ourselves with the intention of building trust and friendship in a meaningful way. We feel that the more authentic our relationships are, the stronger the foundations on which new collaborations and synergies within our movements and communities are built. Cultivating a deeper understanding of our many-layered identities is a vital part of how we can build a more resilient, interconnected web of transformation. Authentic connection with a diverse group of people is both one of the hardest and easiest things to do – we focus on ways to build an honest, genuine, and caring community as the foundation for movements that have resilience and dynamism.
SYSTEMIC
The Jam gives us time to become clearer about our vision and our work in the world; we get a chance to link issues that aren’t commonly linked, to notice crucial intersection points in a manner that will aid us in reimagining what we believe to be possible and in reengineering how we intend to get there. We hope it will enable each participant to deepen their capacity to affect change and carry their dreams forward.
WHY IS IT CALLED A JAM?
YES! Jams bring together people’s creativity, co-learning, and collaboration to Jam for social change. When musicians get together to jam, they share their unique music, which has been shaped by their life experiences, musical lineages, and the hours they’ve spent refining their own skills and knowledge. They jam to learn from each other, have fun, stretch their skills, or to create something new and unique for that moment. Musical themes from spontaneous jams may evolve into something more structured — like songs — that the musicians carry out of the jam into the world. Or, the jam’s music may remain something that lives just in that moment as the magic of improvised artistic expression.
Musicians are able to have fun, build community, and offer their individual talent, inspiration, skills, and perspectives to create something far greater than the sum of its parts. When musicians improvise, they create music that has never been heard before.
Regardless of the outcome, jamming begins with deep listening. Deep listening allows us to hear and experience each others’ voices and lineages in a way that allows us to expand our own musical horizons. YES! Jams do the same. Diverse people bring their questions and challenges, feelings and ideas, joys and pains. We get together and Jam with them through deep listening. We flow between the personal, interpersonal and systemic. Deep listening allows everyone to hear and experience everyone’s unique voices, skills, and experiences. When diverse groups are open, real with each other, and really willing to listen to each other, it expands their human horizons to create new experiences of deep connection. Those are the roots of truly changing the world. Some of the experiences at the Jam create ideas that become new skills, new projects, and new communities. Other experiences only live in the Jam, through the magic of spontaneous connection. So many Jam alumni say those spontaneous connections live inside them as inspiration they draw from to nourish their lives and work for years.
LOCATION, SITE ACCESSIBILITY, TRAVEL, AND COSTS OF ATTENDING
Location:
The North America Leadership Jam will take place at the Ben Lomond Quaker Center, near Santa Cruz, CA. Participants will share rooms in doubles and triples, and delight in delicious, nutritious, primarily plant-based food.
Accessibility of the space and Covid Protocols:
The retreat center’s facilities have paths, drive-able roads, and no-stairs entry access for mobility. They also have sturdy chairs of various kinds. We try to set things up to be as gender-neutral as possible and as fragrance-free as possible. We build in open, unscheduled spaces each day, to make space for downtime and rest. Like all elements of the Jam, we’ll shape our activities and sessions through dialogue with the participants to make them accessible. If you are selected for the Jam, please share any other access support you’d like us to understand.
* COVID: While Covid has become a new normal for many people, for others it remains a serious issue. We want to create a Jam that is accessible, including people with health issues that make Covid a barrier. What follows is our best attempt at trying to balance health and safety needs with our intention of being in a close community at the Jam. If something isn’t sitting well with you, please contact us.
* For the week leading up to the Jam, please minimize your chances of exposure. For example, minimize contact with large groups of people and mask indoors in public places.
* Before leaving home, take a rapid test (provided that they are available where you live).
* While traveling to the Jam, we ask that you wear a mask. This is one of the most important and effective prevention steps.
* At the Jam itself, people can mask if they want (of course), but we will not be imposing masking. We will have rapid tests available onsite.
* If you develop symptoms before the Jam, we need you to test before you come. The same is true during the Jam. Our general policy will be that if you test positive and/or have a fever that you will no longer attend the Jam. (Which, of course, we hope won’t happen!) If you’re not able to come to the Jam for this reason, we will return your participant fee (except for the deposit).
And, if you have any questions about Covid, please note them in your application or write to us at <yesnorthamericajam@gmail.com>.
Costs of attending:
We have a sliding scale for tuition for this jam, and we invite you to pay what you can. We offer different rates and ask you to consider your individual and organizational access to money and wealth. The actual cost of the Jam is $1,500 per person, which breaks down into ~$1000 for lodging, food, materials, and transportation and ~$500 for programming (childcare, stipends for organizers and facilitators). More details of the sliding scale are in the application form
We never want money to be a barrier to participating in a Jam, so we will do everything we can to make it work for you to attend. If cost is a barrier to you, contact us, and we will work together with you to find a way. Some partial scholarships and work trades are available. We can also create a flexible monthly payment plan that can be as low as $25 a month. We invite you to consider a $900 minimum tuition payment, which can be paid in monthly installments. If you have more resources, additional donations above the event price will help us provide scholarships to support the broad spectrum of participation. It is the diversity of the Jams that make them thrive. Donations above the tuition are also tax-deductible.
Travel costs are the responsibility of the participants, though we will help in arranging carpools from the Bay Area and nearby airports, like San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.
WHO IS PUTTING THE NORTH AMERICA JAM TOGETHER?
Organizer
Hanzade Gemiynaoglu is a humanitarian worker and a facilitator, collecting stories and sharing experiences in different spaces. Following her studies, she professionally got engaged in social change, working several years at a grant making foundation, developing programs geared towards vulnerable groups in Turkey. She loves to invent and play around new concepts and content to build the capacity of organizations she works with. With the growing refugee crisis in the Middle East, she shifted her focus to humanitarian work. After working several years with refugees in Turkey, with an extreme turn of events, she became a political asylum in the US in 2019. Currently, she works for Save the Children. She has been to the Anatolia and World Jam in 2011 and since then the Jam became a major part of her life. After facilitating the Anatolia Jams for several years, she joined the Middle East Jam team in 2015. Her journey is all about finding her passions and getting to know herself better through the right mirrors in life. She recently moved to Blacksburg, Virginia, with her love and almost one year old daughter Kayra.
Mónica Carreño Villegas is passionate about inner knowledge, purpose, connection and liberation.She has facilitated transformational processes around self-discovery, leadership and storytelling tedx style with groups like Santander, Kellogg Foundation, UNICEF, Panamericana University, UMA,Creative Mornings; From accompanying youth in high schools & universities, to leadership journeys of managers, and vulnerable communities of women in Mexico, Mónica has worked in USA, Guatemala and Egypt and she has studies on International relations, logotherapy, restorative yoga, and Narrative Therapy,a deep practice on authentic movement and tools to work with group’s collective intelligence. As part of Stingray Artist Collective, Art of Hosting practitioner and the Mexico Jam Team, she had the opportunity to live in Chicago, Australia and Nigeria. Currently, Mónica is focused on the integration of breathing, art and body movement as languages and doors to access the essence, wisdom and inner compass within each person. If she had to explain what she does, Mónica works on a self-discovery journey towards more fulfilling lives for people and a journey with Organizations and Youth towards meaning & purposeful paths.
Sarah Brajtbord is deeply committed to supporting young people to recognize their power, discover their passions, and build the relationships needed to work together to create change. Sarah served as the U.S. Programs Manager and Camp Director of Seeds of Peace for 8 years. Recognizing that working with young people is a privilege and responsibility that demands accountability to one’s own learning process, Sarah began jamming in 2015 at the North America Leadership Jam and hasn’t stopped since. She’s now an organizing member and facilitator of both the North America Leadership Jam and Northeast Changemakers Jam. During the pandemic, Sarah helped to organize a powerful mutual aid project with Presente! Maine that delivered fresh, culturally relevant food to more than 500 families across Southern Maine every week for two years. She also helped to co-create Raise Your Voice Labs, a creative culture transformation company that combines the power of music and group facilitation. Sarah strives to lead a life of deep curiosity, joy, and authentic presence, finding strength in her jam communities and continuously working to deepen her understanding of the complex systems around her.
Lillian Hanan Al-Bilali has been inspired to deepen her understanding of how diverse communities can become more interconnected and, particularly, how shared experiences create space for dialogue — ever since she participated in the 2010 Leveraging Privilege for Social Change Jam. Since her college years, one of her most consistent passions has been issues of youth empowerment. Her student activism at Hampton University focused on societal inequalities, especially in regard to substandard education and high incarceration rates for youth of color. Following graduation, Hanan became an administrator at Children’s Arts and Science Workshops (CASW), a non-profit agency in New York City. Here, she mentored young people from the Washington Heights and Harlem communities by preparing them for college and for the workforce. Currently living in New York City, Hanan received her Masters in Social Work from the University of Michigan. Her concentration in Social Policy and Evaluations allowed her to focus on strengthening services offered through the non-profit sector at the state and local levels. She continues to make people her priority as a committed collaborator with organizations and initiatives that support underrepresented communities.
Austin Willacy is a veteran member of The House Jacks, an acapella group with whom he has produced 10 full-length albums and completed multiple world tours. For the past 25 years, Austin has directed ‘Til Dawn, Youth in Arts’ teen a cappella group that empowers youth to find their voices in many ways. Austin is also an award-winning singer/songwriter with 4 CDs and 2 EPs to his name. His music has been featured on NBC’s “The Sing-Off”, and on three feature film soundtracks, including Thrive, a documentary with over 100 million views. He’s appeared in Rolling Stone and has performed with icons such as Bonnie Raitt and Ray Charles as well as newer artists like Rachael Yamagata and Amos Lee. As an organizer and facilitant for YES!, Austin is a part of the North America Jam, the Arts for Social Change Jam, the Anadolu Sanat Jam, the India Arts for Social Change Jam, the Black Diaspora Jam, the Men Raised as Men Jam, and the nascent All Men’s Jam.
Nour Elkhattaby Strauch is a community organizer and facilitator from Casablanca, Morocco, currently living in Western Massachusetts. Nour has been organizing and facilitating YES! Jams since 2012, including the Middle East Leadership Jam, the North America Leadership Jam, the Men Raised as Men Jam and others. He is currently serving as Executive Director of YES!, and hopes to continue growing the impact of this organization that works with social changemakers at the meeting point of internal, interpersonal and systemic change to co-create thriving, just and balanced ways of life for all.
Nour has also worked with many other notable non-profits in Morocco, the U.S., and beyond including Neighborhoods Association Idmaj, LifePath, Seeds of Peace, CorpsAfrica, Casablanca-Chicago Sister Cities, among others. He is a former member of the National Administrative Council of Amnesty International Morocco.
Will Grant was the co-founder and Executive Director for 10 years of BLAST, a multicultural organization that developed networks of leaders from marginalized communities to democratize education and social service systems in New Mexico. For 20 years, he has worked on LGBTQ* issues at the intersection of community, spirituality, power, and memory – including starting California’s first high school LGBTQ history class. He currently works for the Pachamama Alliance as lead designer for an international training system for local solutions to climate change that integrate regeneration, justice, and connection with the earth. He also runs a consulting practice on organizational development, working with progressive organizations and corporations on democratic decision-making systems. Spirituality and connection to the Earth are the center of his life. When he’s not being such a serious activist, Will is a Radical Fairie named Rootball, a Naraya dancer, a nerd, and a hiker.
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