Heather McCain, LET’S Founder-Executive Director, was accepted to be a part of the first-ever Movements of Belonging retreat, an experimental 6-day gathering for frontline racial, social, and/or climate justice activists and organizers in the greater Vancouver BC area. This gathering is loosely modeled after Yes!’s famous Jams.
The gathering asked participants to imagine a space where we feel universal, unflinching, unwavering belonging. Now, imagine if our front-lines movement work can be seeded from that place.
The gathering was for people who ask any of the following questions:
- What does it take to build resilient, authentic communities of belonging?
- What does it take to create a community of care that will support me and my colleagues to stay connected through challenges?
- What is alive for me in my relationship to social change?
- What do I do about the harms I see occurring within our movement spaces?
- Do I belong in social movement spaces?
- How do I counter cancel culture and other unhealthy ways we sometimes treat each other?
- How do we build a movement that honours the dignity of all people?
- How do my own personal traumas/wounds/triggers impact my ability to engage in social change work?
- How do our collective traumas/wounds/triggers impact our ability to engage in social change work?
- What does it mean to organize at the speed of relationship?
- How do I support myself and others in showing up in our full humanity?
- How do I move from transactional to deeply connected relationships?
The gathering brought together 15 people from the Greater Vancouver Area, including frontline activists, movement organizers, and anyone committed to doing social change work in a way that builds communities of care for everyone. The 6-day (January 21 to 26, 2025) in-person event offered an experience of community building, healing, skill-building, and living into the world we envision.
Origins & Purpose
Movements of Belonging grew out of a May 2023 gathering that took place in upstate New York, US, called Because We Need Each Other (BWNEO). BWNEO brought together 25 movement leaders from across the United States to engage in a deeply vulnerable discussion about the toxic culture of many progressive activist movement spaces, and to strategize about how we can turn the tide.
“We acknowledge that over the past 10-15 years, more and more of our movements have struggled with an inability to build trust, resolve conflicts in healthy and generative ways and create communities of belonging. This has led to severed relationships, burnout and even the dissolution of many key movement organizations.
We believe that we need spaces where each of us can be seen in our wholeness, and where we can see each other. We need spaces for laughter, tears, growth, healing, and the vulnerability that leads to unbreakable bonds. We need spaces for learning new skills and unlearning habits that impede or disrupt connection.
Our goal is to turn the tide and build a truly resilient and sustainable movement in the Greater Vancouver Area, where frontline activists and movement organizers center relationships and build cultures where people can genuinely feel a deep sense of belonging – and where we have a shared vision of the world we are longing for.”
This event is sponsored by Building Belonging in partnership with the Necessary Trouble Collective.
What Participants Experienced
- A wholehearted welcome of all of who we are
- A lived experience of being in interdependent, beloved community
- Laughter, joy, tears, grief, play, creative expression, poetry, singing, improv, movement, art
- Time in nature to reflect, ground and rejuvenate
- Delicious and nutritious vegetarian and vegan food to nourish your body
- Time for self-reflection and deepening self-connection
- Developing deep and supportive relationships with your peers in BC’s racial, social, and climate justice movements
- Learning skills and practices that support our personal and collective liberation