Transformational Impact
SEED has a transformational impact on the lives of SEED leaders, SEED seminar participants, and their communities. Those who participate in SEED report they are better able to listen to all voices, including their own. They are also able to embrace the challenges and joys of the many kinds of diversity found in their own lives and in the lives of others with more confidence and competence.
SEED’s Approach to Fostering Social Justice
SEED acknowledges that justice work is an ongoing process, professionally and personally, not a one-time diversity, equity, and inclusion training. To that end, it deliberately honors and develops local leaders from within their communities rather than bringing in outside specialists. SEED leaders build community by guiding their colleagues in interactive exercises and conversations often sparked by personal reflection, videos, and readings. They use methods of intentionally structured group conversation, developed over more than 30 years, to create learning environments that include input from all voices. SEED seminars emphasize wholeness, wellness and just relationships for everyone involved.
Connecting Individuals and Systems
SEED takes a systemic approach to oppression and privilege, rather than seeing them only in terms of individuals making individual choices. SEED work acknowledges each participant's intersecting identities through story sharing and reflection. We place our stories within systems and reflect on how our stories connect us to each other without blame, shame, or guilt. The SEED process creates conversations that lead to deepening awareness of these systems and imagines possibilities of how we might change them.
A Foundation for Long-Term Change
SEED builds agency and capacity for change by asking what kind of justice we need individually, relationally, and systemically, and by committing to enact that change. It is deeply grounded in recognizing the time it takes to self-reflect, to be in authentic conversation, and to take action towards justice, always centering wholeness, wellness and just relationship with each person. SEED seminars are not a quick fix, but equip communities to deal with polarizing issues through ongoing constructive conversations.
