The National SEED Project partners with communities, organizations, and institutions to build capacity for change toward educational equity and social justice. We do this by training facilitators from our partners to lead ongoing seminar sessions for community members, staff, and students based on self-reflection, structured dialogue, and developing critical analysis. It is by doing this over time with people from a shared setting that we believe we can drive individual, relational, and systemic change. 

In this course we will begin to explore these ideas. What does it mean to believe that Black, Indigenous, & People of Color (BIPOC) wholeness and wellness are possible? Where do we locate that in/on our BIPOC bodies? What cultural traditions, knowledge, gifts, and power do we ground our BIPOC wholeness and wellness in? How have white wholeness and white wellness been privileged over BIPOC wholeness and wellness? In what ways have white wholeness and wellness been dependent on denigrating, diminishing, or appropriating BIPOC wholeness and wellness?

The COVID-19 pandemic impacted us all and especially BIPOC lives, families, communities, organizations, and institutions. Even with the technological resources to “connect” us during the pandemic and vaccines increasingly available for us to “return” to pre-pandemic life, what does this actually mean? Our session, built out of our project’s work for the past 35 years, brings us together in the only way that targeted and marginalized people have survived, resisted, and thrived in spite of hardship and oppression across history. We will self-reflect to cultivate our own stories. We will share with one another in culturally-grounded and critically-conscious ways. We will dream about what it is that we individually and collectively might do to heal and rehumanize ourselves and our racial justice work moving forward. 

What does it mean for you to be whole and well? Where do you locate wholeness and wellness in/on your body? How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your wholeness and wellness? Where would you locate this impact on your body? What does it mean for us to heal and to rehumanize ourselves and our relationships?

There is also an in person version of this session taking place on August 22nd.

Course Objectives

Participants will:

  • Reflect on their own identities, experiences, and wellbeing
  • Engage in structured dialogue and learning opportunities with others with shared and differing identities and experiences
  • Develop their critical understanding of the systemic impact of COVID and what we might individually, relationally, and collectively do to address ongoing social injustices