Cultivating Repair: Meet the Catalyst Initiative cohort
Artists expressing the pain and joy of human experience. Community leaders gathering neighbors to replenish land after disaster. Storytellers using technology to bring untold histories into the light. Omidyar Network celebrates 10 organizations illuminating pathways towards repair and healing, selected from 700 submissions to the Cultivating Repair Catalyst Initiative (a project of Amalgamated Foundation).
Introduction
In December 2023, Omidyar Network launched Cultivating Repair, a four-year $12 million commitment that places repair and healing at the heart of our vision to build cultures of belonging. This work has three aims: to connect organizations practicing various approaches to repair; to foster creative expressions of healing after trauma; and to strengthen collaborative funding so that the broader repair ecosystem can thrive.
Our first step of the journey was a call for nominations via the Cultivating Repair Catalyst Initiative (Catalyst Initiative). This initiative connects courageous, earlier-stage efforts to seed repair and healing of the legacies of colonialism and slavery across the United States.
Repair encompasses a wide range of practices for acknowledging past and present harms,taking accountability for changed behavior, and rectifying harms. When a culture of repairexists, it shapes a community's practices and policies, the structures we build up, and thosewe take down. There are multiple ways of practicing repair: through the stories we tell, theways we gather community, or in rituals of grief and celebration.
After reviewing more than 700 submissions to the Catalyst Initiative across 48 states and three territories, we are deeply inspired. This work is hard and delicate, but we are seeing a hopeful groundswell of leadership. Together with the initiative's Advisory Council, we selected ten organizations to take part in a participatory learning cohort over the next year. They will be accompanied in part by philanthropic partners exploring ways to better resource the growing repair and healing ecosystem.
The Ten Selected Organizations
Congratulations to the 10 organizations selected for the Catalyst Initiative cohort! Here is a glimpse into their shared work:
From left to right: Idris Brewster of Kinfolk, Assia Boundaoui of Inverse Surveillance Project, Alexis Flanagan of Resonance Network, Chelsea Tayrien Hicks (Osage) of Words of the People.
Understanding Our Collective Past to Reimagine Our Future
Kinfolk
Through powerful use of augmented reality, Kinfolk brings Black, Brown, and Queer histories to life in public spaces. Kinfolk was founded to create a future where communities are active shapers of our public spaces, carriers of our histories, and reflections of the richness of our nation.
Inverse Surveillance Project
Inverse Surveillance Project integrates community art, healing, and tech for American Muslims to heal from the collective trauma of state surveillance. Healing means safety expressing religious and political opinions, mending bonds broken by surveillance, and freedom when exercising constitutional rights.
Resonance Network
Resonance Network creates visionary spaces to imagine and practice living into a world beyond violence. This world becomes possible when individuals commit to personal healing, communities practice new cultural norms, and systems scale these transformations.
Words of the People
Honoring ancestral Indigenous languages, Words of the People amplifies creative writing to heal people and land. As Indigenous peoples speak, sing, write, and create in their ancestral languages, they deepen connection to culture, community, and place.
From left to right: Haewon Asfaw of Abolition Dream Lab, Corinne Espinoza of HEART, Oscar Trujillo of The Embodiment Institute.
Healing Relationships with Our Selves, Our Cultures, and Our Communities
Abolition Dream Lab
Abolition Dream Lab creates a culture of collective and individual healing for Black abolitionists. Healing means the integration of accountability practices as a cultural norm, mutual aid as an economic model, and self-governance as a way of being.
Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team (HEART)
Centering deeply connected local communities, the Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team (HEART) reimagines public safety. Cambridge HEART envisions a world where everyone feels responsible for and capable of working through conflict.
The Embodiment Institute
Through research, training, and culture change, The Embodiment Institute evolves the conversation, practices, and politics of healing. The Embodiment Institute envisions a world where our relationships with ourselves, each other, and the environment are authentic, intimate, and regenerative.
From left to right: Richard Wallace of Equity & Transformation Chicago, Camille Kalama (Native Hawaiian) of Koʻihonua, Michael Ishii of Tsuru for Solidarity.
Reimagining Institutions, Structures, and Systems
Equity and Transformation Chicago
Equity and Transformation Chicago advocates for Black workers engaged in the informal economy. Through community-led advocacy for guaranteed income and reparations for lasting harms of the War on Drugs, they are upholding dignity and opening hopeful pathways to healing.
Koʻihonua
Through cultural revitalization, Koʻihonua reclaims and restores Native Hawaiian lands and practices. Ko'ihonua believes that healing begins with land and continues with advocacy to move Hawaiian lands into Hawaiian hands.
Tsuru for Solidarity
Building cross-community solidarity and intergenerational healing, Tsuru for Solidarity calls for the end of past and present state violence. As Japanese American survivors of WWII imprisonment, their work is grounded in the belief that "all beings will be liberated", which comes from a cultural principle from Buddhism's Bodhisattva Vows.
Additional Organizations Recognized
We are humbled to learn alongside the Catalyst Initiative cohort and commit to sharing insights on building a culture of repair as we go.
Together with the initiative's Advisory Council, we also want to recognize and express deep gratitude to a wider constellation of organizations that took time to share their stories and wisdom as part of this process. We are honored to be connected with all of these organizations, which embody the boundless possibilities for healing and repair.
Highlighted Organizations
Barred Business builds collective power to heal, activate, and resource justice-impacted communities.
BIG We Foundation transforms Southern Black local economies to support safe and abundant communities.
Brown Boi Project (BBP) works to create healthy frameworks of masculinity and advance gender justice.
Chicago Torture Justice Center provides collective healing from the trauma of police violence.
Community Organizing for Racial Equity (CORE)
Creative Reaction Lab
Kāhuli Leo Leʻa amplifies culture change through the stewardship of Native Hawaiian cultural practices.
Media 2070 Project (a project of Free Press) radically reimagines media to advance a culture of repair.
Nature for Justice supports BIPOC farmers investing in regenerative agriculture and reversing BIPOC farm loss.
The Descendants Project dismantles the legacies of slavery for Mississippi River communities.
Additional Participating Organizations
African American Redress Network • Agrarian Trust • Axle Impact Studio's Reparation.VR • Borderless — A Black and Indigenous Collective • CahokiaPHX Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery • Cradle of Care • Dignity Restoration Project • Emmett Till Interpretive Center • Faith Matters Network Collaborative • Food Culture Collective • Get Free • Healing Justice HEART Women and Girls • Indigenous Commons • Indigenous Justice Institute for Democratic Education in America's Jackson and Puerto Rico Healing and Solidarity Exchange • Intelligent Mischief • Just Cities Institute • Kulaiwi Land Trust • Land Justice Futures • Liberated Learning Community • Lowcountry Gullah Foundation • Make Justice Normal • Medicine Bowl Giving Circle • Muslim Wellness Foundation • Narrative Arts • National Black Cultural Information Trust, Inc. • North Bay Organizing Project
Not Our Native Daughters • One Square World, Inc. • Our Sisters Room, Inc. • Puʻuhonua Society • Ramapough Culture and Land Foundation • Rematriation • Right to Democracy Project • Terence Crutcher Foundation • The Partnership Fund • Turtle Mountain IMPACT • Xa Kako Dile • Your Neighborhood Museum
Advisory Council
Special thanks to our Advisory Council for their compassionate accountability and guidance through this selection process. We have deep gratitude for their continued wisdom and nurture of the ecosystem.
Tanya Chung-Tiam-Fook (Akawaio), co-holder, 7 Gen Cities
Rashida James-Saadiya, executive director, Muslim Power Building
Michael Johnson (Nuxbaaga / Sahnish / Anishinaabe), president, IllumiNative
Dr. Megan Ming Francis, associate professor of political science, University of Washington
Conclusion
The Cultivating Repair Catalyst Initiative represents a hopeful groundswell of leadership committed to acknowledging past and present harms, taking accountability for changed behavior, and rectifying harms through multiple pathways. These organizations demonstrate the boundless possibilities for healing and repair through storytelling, community gathering, and rituals of grief and celebration.
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