Gender Equity Bundle

Register for both the Consent Gender Power 6 week course in June and July, AND the Harm Systems Design Retreat on July 7th and get THREE FREE PRINT BOOKS: the Cultivate Consent Workbook, the Millennial Sex Education book of fiction with accompanying reflection and discussion questions, and the Resilience + Revitalization Art Zine. 

Please keep in mind that the Harm Systems Design Retreat requires a minimum of two people from an organization to participate to share the learning. 

Learn More About the Course + Retreat

Consent Gender Power 6 Week Course

bluelight academy's Consent, Gender, Power class is an opportunity for community educators, advocates, care providers, and people impacted by gender based violence to explore the roots of violence and frameworks of prevention and response. Through this multimedia course we dive into the history, power dynamics, and systems that perpetuate and uphold gender based violence as well as strategies and tools to practice consent, healing, and harm reduction.

The Consent, Gender, Power Course is for you if: 

• You have experienced gender based violence, homophobia, or transphobia and are looking for supportive community and frameworks to make sense of your experience and identify a path forward
• You are a parent, caregiver, or teacher who wants to understand how to teach and practice the skills necessary to prevent gender based violence and support queer and trans youth around you
• You are an advocate, peer educator, or support professional working alongside queer and trans people, survivors of violence, or folks who have committed harm and want more skills to practice harm reduction and transformative justice
• You are a transformative justice, restorative justice, or community accountability practitioner who wants more values aligned tools to address gender based violence
• You have perpetuated gender based violence and are looking for a space to learn the tools and frameworks to support healing and prevent further harm
•  You are an organizer who believes in ending violence without creating more violence
  

Harm Systems Design 1-Day Retreat

The Harm Systems Design daylong retreat is great for organizational leaders, people from Human Resources or community accountability teams or entrepreneurs thinking about how to create systems in their endeavors. Through an examination of Organizational Accountability, what harm looks like in the participants’ context, and consideration of the legal liability requirements of organizations, participants will leave with examples and inspirations of how they can respond to harm given their unique context.

The Harm Systems Design Retreat is for you if:

• You have been told that your organization or people within it have harmed folks in the community, their colleagues, or program participants
• The system designed to respond to a harm you've experienced did not comprehensively meet your needs
• Your organization keeps being pulled into controversies and conflicts in community and you are unsure how to set boundaries around what is your place to address
• You have heard about transformative justice and are curious how those philosophies and principles could be applied in your organization
• You want to think about accountability beyond task completion and deadlines
• You want to think about harm response beyond legal liability and HR
• People on your team are burnt out and overwhelmed
• Your team or community have experienced “incidents,” “DEI breaches,” microaggressions, anonymous social media accounts, or public call outs
• Feedback on your team tends to be either only positive or quite harsh
•  Your organization's values conflict with your HR protocols

How We Approach Organizational Accountability

Our curriculum reframes traditional diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) frameworks and practices, standard professional best practices, and accountability in an institutional setting to create a shared understanding of Organizational Accountability. We found that when people wanted to learn about DEI, they were often actually wondering how to understand, prevent, and respond to harm. The core issues people face in relation to diversity, equity, and inclusion are microaggressions, harm, and structural inequity. 

Our practice of organizational accountability grounds itself in the knowledge of who the organization is designed to be accountable to, and what it is accountable for by implementing governance and feedback systems that center those directly impacted by the organization's mission and vision. Organizational accountability is about translating values into practice, practicing generative conflict, preventing and responding to harm without centering liability or the state, and responding to patterns of harm and conflict through emergent and adaptive organizational strategy. Spring Up’s frameworks of accountability and the Organizational Accountability Wheel are informed by grassroots transformative justice and community accountability practice, and draw on the wisdom of the Indigenous Medicine Wheel, as expressed by the People of Standing Rock / Lakota, and integral theory by Ken Wilber. 

This daylong retreat is an overview of the Organizational Accountability Wheel, including core tools, policies, and frameworks to have holistic harm prevention and response mechanisms. Participants are expected to complete two reflection worksheets before the retreat itself, and then continue the work of translating what they learned into their organization beyond the retreat itself. Organizations also have the option to book the two day version of this experience for their private group, in which we go beyond overviewing the core concepts into self-auditing where your organizations systems currently are and co-designing next steps to implement these best practices in your community. If you are interested in the extended version of this experience for your organization, please email [email protected] with the subject “OAW retreat” including the size of your group.