Remembering Our Roots

The Center’s Social Justice Program was invited to participate in “Remembering Our Roots” ALANA Leadership Retreat, a one-day retreat organized by Vassar College’s ALANA Student Cultural Center. ALANA is a space for learning, student advising, understanding and celebrating ALANA culture. These African American/Black, Latino/a, Asian/Asian American and Native American organizations serve as a focal point for both students and faculty, essentially the entire academic community, to explore issues of cultural and racial identity, equity and pluralism.  

The Sankofa symbol comes to mind in describing the retreat experience. Sankofa is a mythic bird that flies forward while looking backward with an egg (symbolizing the future) in its mouth. An Akan1 word, it literally translates to mean “it is not taboo to go back and fetch what you forget.” Retreatants were reflecting on the roots of the College’s ALANA’s beginning, reaching back to the past to both honor it and retrieve what was either forgotten or lost that could benefit these emerging leaders as they move forward into the future as leaders in their respective organizations and as a collective on campus. 

SJP facilitated a workshop titled Soul-Filled Leadership: A Pathway to a Resilient Community of Leaders. We discussed the inherent traits of leadership that transcend time, language, and culture, and emphasized a new paradigm and philosophy of leadership that would take these leaders into the future. Fresh and evolving world views grow out of an ethic of sustainability, interdependence of all life, and the fullness of who we are.

These student leaders explored the meaning of authentic or transformative leadership--a model of leadership guided by the inner wisdom. They were introduced to two primary contemplative methods--deep listening and storytelling--to support the development of inner wisdom, clarity, and imagination, important attributes for personal transformation and transformative leadership. This experiential workshop helped the students open their hearts, touch a place of empathy, and create a bond of understanding, all important elements of building authenticity in a diverse group. An authentic and transformative leader is able to embrace the differences in each other with an open, compassionate, kind, and sensitive heart. As future leaders, this inner wisdom will, over time, call them to be other-centered, not self-centered.

In the end, everyone felt positive about their experience, and as one of the students said, “it brought the past, present and future together."

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