This year, FCCAN opened its arms to accept the gifts and challenges of change as we transitioned into a new era of leadership. Together, Litzy, Yurixhi, Jesus & Rachel and I charted new horizons as we evolved our roles within the organization. We leaned deeply into adrienne marie brown’s wisdom with Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism- How we bring down massive systems through small, complex, grassroots, organizing– and drew nutrients from the well of FCCAN’s 20-year history to guide our path forward. We also celebrated our 20 year birthday party with a fundraiser in September, outdoors in the park with friends and comrades for the first time since the pandemic. There have been many lessons as we reflect on a year spent in deep transition, some organizational and others more personal.
These years have demanded much from all of us as we live through a time of great disruption. We’ve asked what it means to lead FCCAN during an era of global transformations that require us to center how we care for ourselves, each other, and the planet. The threads of change are many. From contending with internal challenges and gifts of growth to navigating the external forces impacting the global landscape of the nonprofit sector, FCCAN spent the year in deep reflection and recalibration.
The theory and practice of healing justice have shaped our ability as humans to bring seemingly disparate entities into wholeness. We’re humbled by the opportunity to continue nurturing the work of a thriving ecosystem of people and projects organizing and guiding our community towards justice.
With an immense amount of gratitude to you, dear friend.
Celebrating 2022
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We leaned into care for ourselves and the network. As an organization, we collectively asked ourselves what our medicine is – and reflected on our ancestral guides who carried us this far. We felt the joy of our work deepen as our staff reclaimed their time and rest with delegation and teamwork. We are pleased to implement an actionable step toward the well-being of our organization by incorporating weekly feedback meetings with staff to connect and hold each other accountable, establish paid time off and parental leave; with healing justice as a guiding philosophy for how we work and rest together.
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We fortified our internal capacity. We welcomed 3 new staff members to FCCAN, a new intern and 2 new spokescouncil members- supporting our Finance, Fundraising, Community Organizing, and Healing Justice teams to grow our capacity to serve our network and community. We look forward to welcoming additional staff in 2023.
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We hosted hundreds of people both virtually and in person at healing justice events in 2022. We summoned all of our healing modalities and activated our collective imaginations to insist on our divinity, our healing, and our liberation.
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We fortified transitions through our network with campaigns, affiliates & programs. We kicked off the year by ending our year long campaign, School Justice PSD (2020-2021) and transitioning it to a long-term, public education campaign that focuses on base building and knowledge sharing around alternatives to punishment and criminalization in schools. We also expanded our network, by welcoming the Hispanic Women’s Farming Proyecto as a fiscal sponsor, and supported their growth as a staple of the community at the interaction of food justice, immigrant justice & capacity building for women of color farmers. Together we asked, how can we deepen our relationships to a vast network of projects and what does it take to ensure those projects are deeply resourced?
FCCAN and Fuerza Latina amplified and celebrated the 20 year anniversary of our Network. FCCAN and our affiliate member, Fuerza Latina hosted a fundraiser and community celebration, bringing the community together in person for the first time since 2020. Together we shared food provided by Fuerza Latina’s workers owned cooperative, La Fondita Latina, danced to live music, highlighted local artists in our silent auction and volunteers and staff shared their wisdom with a vast community of people. Our Fundraiser & Community Celebration brought together community members, families, organizers and artists, while resourcing our work for the future.