News

On July 19-21, 2024, Open Buffalo’s eighth cohort of Emerging Leaders began their training course with a healing and relationship building retreat at Beaver Hollow Resort and Conference Center. This year’s Opening Weekend Retreat focused on healing and self-care practices and provided our Emerging Leaders with an opportunity to rest and build their own personalized self-care plans. 

This retreat curriculum represents a departure from past years, when we have focused on building community organizing skills at Opening Weekend. As Black feminist thinker and writer Audre Lorde put it, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Our objective for the retreat was to emphasize the importance of wellness and self-care as a radical act for folks involved in justice and liberation work, in keeping with Open Buffalo’s broader goal of creating sustainable change and change-makers. An important part of that work is resourcing our leaders with the tools and strategies they need to eliminate burnout and overwork in movement spaces so that we can sustain our efforts and build new systems that do not replicate the harms of the systems we are replacing. 

This year’s Opening Weekend training team included Open Buffalo Executive Director Franchelle Parker, Deputy Director Max Anderson, Director of Leadership Development Leslie Nickerson, Director of Community Engagement Devon Patterson, Director of Racial Equity and Justice Dr. Kush K. Bhardwaj, and Emerging Leaders Advisory Board members Donna Latham Edwards, Kenyana David, and Melissa Spikes-Archer. The workshop lineup included a relationship-building opening circle and racial healing circle, introduction to leadership styles and crafting a personal leadership statement, a choose-your-own-adventure activity segment featuring boxing and African drum and dance, one-on-one relationship building conversations, the annual Emerging Leaders talent show, a Heal & Deal seminar with Dr. B, self-care plans, nightly bonfires, and more.  

Many leaders expressed gratitude for the opportunity to pour into themselves and one another. In some of their words, given anonymously in the retreat evaluation: 

“I can use what I learned to protect my mental health when engaging in challenges. I also learned how to take up space in the room without taking up all the air in the room.” 

“My biggest take away from this is that we are so much more powerful in numbers than we are alone. No one man is an island until himself.” 

“Thanks for a truly wonderful experience - I feel extremely grateful to have been selected for this program and to have experienced this retreat with everyone.” 

We encourage everyone to visit the Class of 2024 page on our website and get to know the leaders in this cohort!