Commonweal News - Winter 2017

E D U C AT I O N A N D T H E A R T S

DECEMBER 2017

Youth at Commonweal’s 2017 Power of Hope camp created a music video (view at www.youtube.com/user/ NewSchoolCommonweal).

Dear Commonweal Friends, I came to Commonweal five years ago for the first time.

Jaune Evans, director of the Art and Healing Institute at Commonweal at the time, invited me to co-present a workshop with two others: Dr. BJ Miller, who was then director of the Zen Hospice Project, and Michael Lerner, the founder of Commonweal. I was happy to accept, mostly to have an excuse to go to West Marin.

That presentation was the beginning of my journey with Commonweal. Since then I have been warmly welcomed as part of the community—of Commonweal, of Bolinas, of West Marin, and the wider community whose lives have been touched by Commonweal.

It can be hard to describe exactly what the work of Commonweal is. I do know that we are all aligned with one basic mission: to make the world a better place. Our approach to our work is based on kindness and humility, combined with years of experience and an entrepreneurial spirit.

I think of the cement building in Bolinas that houses us as a monastery. As our world experiences challenging times, part of our mission is to keep the light glowing, to deepen and continue the work, so that when we are called to serve, we will be prepared.

This building that houses our administration has its own history—a history whose mission we like to think we carry forward. Built by Henry Marconi and later owned by RCA, the building was one of the first radio transmission stations in the world. Commonweal still transmits to the world. Those of us who work here are the crew of the radio station and the brothers and sisters of the monastery. We make sure that the machines operate and the historical texts are well kept.

We reap from the those whose vision and spirit founded Commonweal’s programs: those like Commonweal founders Carolyn Brown (who founded the Full Circle School),

Burr Heneman (who changed California’s ocean policy), David Steinhardt (who helped reform the California juvenile justice system), Sharyle Patton (acclaimed expert in health and environment), Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen (who brought healing back to medical education), Penny Livingston Stark (international permaculture expert), James Stark (founder of the Ecology of Leadership program), and Pauline Tesler (pioneer in collaborative law). Michael Lerner’s work in healing, integrative medicine, and environmental health will always be a central guiding light, core to Commonweal and its work.

Another generation of Commonweal visionaries is emerging.

Amber Faur and Yoon Kang O’Higgins are leading teaching reform through the arts; Dr. Anna O’Malley is building on Penny and Rachel’s legacy in changing how we practice medicine; Karen Wang is bringing our environmental health knowledge and experience to Millenials; Alexandra Destler is helping new mothers make their homes safe; Dr. BJ Miller is exploring end-of-life issues; Angela Oh and Tutu offer contemplative practice in downtown Los Angeles; and Dia Penning presents intergenerational gatherings for Millenials.

There are more.

This issue of Commonweal News is focused on education and the arts—a theme that runs through many of Commonweal’s programs. I believe that some of the tensions wounding this country’s heart and lands come from a lack of imagination and flexibility. The possibility of allowing mystery, difference, and the unknown has been transformed into fear instead of creativity, into violence instead of love and compassion. As we move into 2018, our hope is to allow mystery, imagination, and flexibility to guide our programs and our organization into the future.

With gratitude, Oren Slozberg, Executive Director

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e are living in extraordinary times. The enduring reality we face is the degradation of the natural systems that support life on earth. The mission of Commonweal is to heal people and heal the earth. Never has our work been more needed.

It is a great pleasure to welcome Oren Slozberg as Commonweal executive director.

Oren was a natural choice. He distinguished himself as chief strategies officer during his first four years at Commonweal. His mandate was to imagine our next forty years of work.

Oren brings three passions to Commonweal: first, to increase the diversity of our board and staff; second, to strengthen our services to young people; and third, to further develop our work in education and the arts.

Oren has studied and understands Commonweal’s unique culture and structure. He is in constant movement, meeting friends old and new, describing our work, and above all, listening. Oren’s abilities to listen, to inspire, and to engage are some of his greatest strengths. I hope you will have an opportunity to get to know Oren. He is a beautiful, gifted, kind, creative, humble, and visionary soul. We are fortunate to have him.

“Beauty will save the world,” Dostoevsky famously remarked. This edition of Commonweal News is dedicated to our work in education and the arts.

The Center for Creative Community, The Power of Hope youth camp, the Fall Gathering, the Commonweal Cancer Help Program (CCHP), Healing Circles, the Gift of Compassion, and Visual Thinking Strategies are all in significant parts education and arts-based programs.

Commonweal has a long history with the healing arts; we conducted two of the earliest conferences on the subject in the

1980s. Our work in education and the arts has been central to Commonweal’s work since its inception.

Having Oren as Commonweal executive director allows me to focus on what I do best. I will continue to serve the Commonweal community as president. I work closely with Oren and our leadership team, which also includes Chief Operating Officer Arlene Allsman and Chief Financial Officer Vanessa Marcotte.

My focus is on the overall direction of Commonweal and these four programs, for which I have primary responsibility: ■■

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We will conduct our 200th CCHP in April. CCHP is at the heart of Commonweal’s work. We are grateful to program alumni, who have been, by far, the most generous supporters of Commonweal for more than 30 years.

Through our partnership with Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS)—an organization started by a CCHP alum for young women with cancer—we now offer three-day retreats with CCHP staff and programming. We have increased the BAYS retreats from one to three offerings per year since their inception in 2012. Like CCHP, these retreats profoundly affect the participants—a diverse group, many with young families and careers—as they navigate life with cancer.

Healing Circles extends the work of CCHP far beyond Commonweal and beyond cancer. Our lead partners include Callanish in Vancouver,

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BC, and Harmony Hill in Union, Washington. Both have conducted retreats based on CCHP for more than 20 years. We have new Healing Circles centers in Langley, on Whidbey Island in Washington, and in Houston, as well as nascent programs at Smith Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, DC, in North Carolina, in Virginia, and in Jerusalem.

Discovery Circles: A Creative Path to Healing

Finally, a small group of us are hard at work developing our new website, Beyond Conventional Cancer Therapies (BCCT). BCCT is a natural extension of my book from MIT Press, Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Cancer Therapies. BCCT is an effort to give people with cancer and those who love them the best guidance we can in integrative cancer care.

rockier shores. First longings leapt up to brush my heart. Distant voices appeared,

In addition to these healing programs, I also work closely with The New School at Commonweal. We now have more than 250 podcasts and videos of conversations with thought leaders from across the country and around the world.

In each of these programs—with the exception of the BCCT website—the healing arts play a central role. We see art and creativity as important and helpful tools in the process of healing, as well as ways of appreciating and remembering the beauty still here in this world. We will continue to explore the connection between art and healing in our programs moving forward.

With warm best wishes, Michael Lerner, President

by Diana Lindsay, Co-Founder, Healing Circles Langley When I actually sat down and began to write…I found my mind pulled toward and ebbed, and then appeared again. I remembered the stories … of a family trying to explain itself. … I strongly resisted the idea of offering my past in a book… not because that past is particularly painful or perverse but because it speaks to those aspects of myself that resist conscious choice.

This is the voice of Barack Obama.

Writing his memoir, Dreams from My Father, increased his field of awareness and helped him make sense of his life. He’s not the only one to experience this, and that’s not the only benefit. “The scientific research on the benefits of so-called expressive writing is surprisingly vast,” wrote Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times. “Studies have shown that writing about one’s self and personal experiences can improve mood disorders, help reduce symptoms among cancer patients, improve a person’s health after a heart attack, reduce doctor visits, boost memory…and improve happiness,” she said.

At Healing Circles Langley, we reinforce this individualized expression and healing with collective support. Our Write to Heal circle gathers for 90 minutes, embarking first on an interior journey of discovery through writing. Susanne Fest, co-host with Kathryn Stivers of the circle, writes: We believe that the circle holds us, gives us courage to look, remember, and name what might have escaped our conscious awareness. We put pen to paper, watch words and sentences appear: manifestations of the previously

ephemeral, invisible, unknown. Finally, we read to each other out loud. This process of witnessing closes the circle.

What was previously unknown has been invited into our awareness, represented in words, written on paper, spoken out loud, and integrated into community. In this way, healing becomes a possibility.

Circle Poem

voices joined in laughter and discovery circling grief and love—an enso of healing we pass our words, our sentences to each other’s waiting hearts and in the wake of words we arrive

Our Poetry for Grief and Sadness circle gathers around the hearth. “We have been touched by death, grief, illness, and loss and still we laugh, we hug, we write. We are healed by love, by sharing our stories, and by writing circle poems together,” writes Lynn Nelson, a circle member for two years.

Write to Heal and Poetry for Grief and Sadness are part of Healing Circles Langley’s Discovery Circles program.

Discovery circles enable people who

share a common way of processing life’s challenges (but may not share a common condition) to come together in the spirit of self-discovery. The arts enable breakthroughs in our thinking and our understanding of self in crisis that our rational minds may withhold. This happens through art, words, dance, and song. Our Circle of Song meets monthly in a collective process of quiet singing, ramping up to boisterous joy and energy, and ending with reflective, spirit-inducing song. In our most recent evening, a man who had missed a few circles returned with a bald head and a mask—evidence of the challenging cancer treatment he is going through. When we started to sing “I am alive,” I could see his eyes tear up.

When the song moved to “Who is this aliveness? I am,” he broke into sobs.

“I haven’t cried yet,” he said. Singing, a deep love of his since childhood, was his pathway to his inner feelings.

Spontaneously, a circle member started to sing: While I live, I love While I love, I sing While I sing, I dance, While I dance, I love, While I love, I live.

We didn’t need to have cancer to feel that aliveness.

Find out more at www.healingcircleslangley.org.

Healing Circles Langley is funded by the generous support of the South Whidbey community.

Top: In the Write to Heal circle, members process their grief, illness, or other life-changing events internally before sharing in a supportive environment.

Bottom left: Our Thought Circle celebrates the opening of Healing Circles Langley in January 2015.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF HEALING CIRCLES LANGLEY.

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Healing and the Arts: Weaving Creativity into Commonweal Programs

by Kyra Epstein, Communications Manager and Oren Solzberg, Executive Director It has been one of my deepest joys to attend to your discoveries through your placement of symbols in the sand at a time in your lives that were full of challenges. Do you remember how we would start our sandtrays? I would ask you to put your hands in the sand and drop any fears or self judgments. Then you would take a tray and collect whatever objects attracted you, followed by intuitive placement of the objects, followed by story telling evoked by the objects through which meaningful discoveries would emerge. My prayer is that your living sandtray is as full of mystery and discovery as your Commonweal sandtray was, and that the blessings of life are recognized by you and placed around you so that revelations can flow abundantly.

—Marion Weber, Sandtray Facilitator, Commonweal Cancer Help Program

Commonweal has a long history of embracing creativity as a path to healing.

We have witnessed firsthand the value of the arts as a vehicle to and a modality for self expression, inspiration, and healing.

The connection between the two runs as a thread through many of our programs, most notably, the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, Healing Circles, the Center for Creative Community, and our Sandtray work.

Over the years, we have developed a model for using art and healing in communities, and we’ve found that it works well, bringing transformation and insight to diverse groups. Our facilitators come to this work with humility, allowing people space to find their own voice and way. The model is not dogmatic or prescriptive. There is a quality of mystery that surrounds creativity and the arts; we find that this quality allows for a greater sense of healing, belonging, and relating.

The model works by creating a strong community container and then introducing the opportunity for new experiences and challenges—something just out of normal comfort range for participants. We find that growth happens by creating new thresholds and moving past boundaries. Creativity and art provide a non-threatening and safe space for moving into new territories, where healing and growth happen.

Many visionary leaders have contributed to Commonweal’s collective model for art and healing work. Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, came to the Commonweal Cancer Help Program as medical director, bringing with her the seeds of what developed into her Discovery Model Process. Commonweal Co-founder and President Michael Lerner understood the importance of healing and the arts in the treatment of cancer and other illnesses early on. During a time when conventional treatments for cancer were generally the only options, he saw a complementary place for art and creativity. Executive Director Oren Slozberg brings a strong background in arts and creativity to Commonweal. His Commonweal program, the Center for Creative Community, explores the intersection of dialogue, cognition, creativity, and community with programs such as the Power of Hope youth camp, the Ecology of Awareness, and the Commonweal Gatherings.

Top Right: Participants in the Power of Hope youth camp use creativity to build leadership skills and community. Bottom left: origami cranes are folded in remembrance of lost members of the Commonweal community.

Bottom right: Santray has been used as part of the Cancer Help Program for decades.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE POWER OF HOPE YOUTH CAMP PROGRAM AND KYRA EPSTEIN.

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Commonweal’s Art and Healing Offerings Power of Hope Youth Camps A part of Commonweal’s Center for Creative Community, the Power of Hope youth camps break down barriers between differences, encourage creativity, develop leadership, and teach youth how to listen to each other.

Look Clubs Visual Thinking Strategies is a group problem-solving process that uses art to build critical thinking and communitybuilding skills. Look Clubs are groups that meet regularly, like book clubs, to evaluate art and to practice deep looking and thinking. Commonweal hosts quarterly Look Clubs in San Francisco, Marin County, and the East Bay. Sandtray Sandtray is a powerful therapeutic tool stemming from a Jungian technique. It is a process of allowing our unconscious to spontaneously select objects from an array of many objects, arranging the objects in a sandtray, and then observing the resulting scene to gain insight into ourselves. Community groups are welcome to use the Sandtray room with a facilitator.

Gallery Commonweal Gallery Commonweal is a 1500-squarefoot gallery with exhibitions focused on the ability of art to heal our bodies, minds, and souls. We invite groups to use Gallery Commonweal, or the smaller adjoining Omega Room, as a community rental space for meetings or events.

The Summer of Reflection and The New School

by Steve Heilig, MPH, New School Host This past summer there was much hoopla in the San Francisco area and beyond surrounding the 50th anniversary of the 1967 “Summer of Love”—that brief but fabled season when the funky HaightAshbury district blossomed as the world center of hippiedom, involving not only unprecedented amounts of hair but also peace, love, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Some of that trickled over the famous bridge to the little coastal hamlet of Bolinas, which was to become the home of Commonweal and the New School (TNS).

Those local cultural eruptions have long since faded, and some of it was to appear silly in retrospect. New School guest Peter Coyote, one of the founders of the anarchistic Haight group the Diggers, in fact later called the whole Summer of Love concept a media-generated farce, commercialized and trivialized for mass consumption.

“There were a lot of people who were putting their lives on the line to make change, and you would think everyone was just going to rock and roll shows and wearing bell-bottom pants,” he recently lamented.

But, undeniably, the ferment of the 1960s did mark a much broader mass phenomenon with many facets. The vaunted but ill-defined “revolution” didn’t quite arrive overall, but some of the most important and progressive movements of our time can be traced to the sixties: civil rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay

rights, healthcare for all, organic eating and living, anti-war/peace/“no nukes,” and the trend towards liberalizing drug laws, to name eight big ones. All of these have had profound if mixed impacts in the subsequent decades. Most Americans, again to varying degrees, feel these have been positive changes.

But it is undeniable that most, if not all, of these movements are now the subjects of a concerted backlash. Many have remarked that “Make America Great Again” seems to harken to the 1950s, before all the movements above really got underway.

The great historian Arnold Toynbee once said, “The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the Twentieth Century.”

He may have been overly optimistic, but time will tell. In the meantime, listen to some TNS talks, like those of Zen master Shoda Harada Roshi, for some timeless wisdom.

Quite a few of the talks we have been privileged to present at TNS in recent times have addressed “alternative” movements from the 1960s to varying degrees. Drs. Sadja Greenwood and Anna O’Malley on health rights, especially of women and of communities. Dr. David Smith on the free clinic movement and his landmark lasting slogan, “healthcare is a right, not a privilege.” Michael Pollan and Don Lattin on the resurgence of psychedelic research. Our community reading from American ecology pioneer Henry David Thoreau’s journal. The late great Joanne Kyger’s indelible Zen and green poetry. Many conversations related to Commonweal’s own focus on what has long been called a “holistic” approach to healing cancer and other diseases. And then there’s Dennis McNally (not incidentally long associated with the Grateful Dead) talking about American music’s evolution, and living folk legend Ramblin’ Jack

Elliot (who actually lived and played the evolution). In the sixties, music was central.

It has been a joy to recall and reflect with these guests on hard lessons learned.

Already, by the end of the sixties, a sense of looming apocalypse had grown, exemplified

by Nixon’s presidency and the horrors and failures of the Vietnam War. “It’s true that the free lifestyle is unsustainable, but it doesn’t mean you have to give up your values,” Coyote now says. “Most of our kids became nurses, healers, doctors, and environmentalists, and I’m really proud of them,” he says. The good tends to survive the bad eras, at least in some form.

As many wise TNS speakers have counseled, take your hope and inspiration where you can find it. Take care of yourself.

And then, if you can and are so inclined, get to work.

Find out more at tns.commonweal.org.

TNS would not be possible without the support of Bet Lev Foundation, West Marin Fund, The Whitman Institute, and individual contributions from TNS supports like you.

Top: New School Host Micheal Lerner in conversation with Author and Journlist Michael Pollan.

PHOTO BY KYRA EPSTEIN.

Below: New School Host Steve Heilig in conversation with Author and Actor Peter Coyote.

PHOTO COURTESY THE NEW SCHOOL.

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Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicine: Exploring Healing from the Earth Up

by Anna O’Malley, MD, Director, Natura Institute How do we, natural human beings, reconnect with the living systems that restore us to health and wholeness? How can individuals and communities be empowered to take care of each other and themselves? How can we cultivate a healing ecology within the culture of medicine? What happens when we “re-member” ourselves into our bigger body, our beloved natural home, free of the deluded separation from which such pain and dis-ease has sprung? What can we reclaim as medicine as we step into our highest expression of vitality? What might western medicine learn from permaculture? What does it mean to “do no harm”?

These questions breathe life into the nascent Natura Institute for Ecology and Medicine at Commonweal Garden.

“Natura,” the Latin root of the word nature, invites us to consider the essential qualities, those innate attributes, which we are born into as human beings. We are invited to consider what medicine is, and how ecology inspires a deeper attunement to wholeness.

As a family and community medicine provider bearing witness to the limiting challenges of our medical system, I am moved to respond to the suffering engendered by our current health care system. Our healers are burning out at an escalating rate, strained by the pressures

of our fast-paced disease management system and disillusioned by the challenge to improving health and well-being within a culture that does not support it. Further, patients often feel unmet, unheard, or unseen within a rushed office visit, and have a limited understanding of what their human being needs to be well. Sometimes, they have felt the trauma of being disrespected, invalidated, intimidated, or otherwise violated while being trained to heal, or while in pursuit of healing. The culture of medicine itself is in need of healing.

We are in need of a new model of care that does not deplete the healer, that empowers those in need of well-being,

and that does no harm on an ecological, planetary level.

Penny Livingston Stark and James Stark have been loving caretakers at Commonweal Garden since 2003 with their Regenerative Design Institute (RDI). This summer, RDI is moving to Whidbey Island, WA, with Penny and James, and Natura will open its doors at Commonweal Garden. Grounded in ecological principals, Natura will weave the thread of reciprocal healing through programs exploring in-depth integrative medicine, permaculture, ecotherapy, cultural wellness, and intergenerational vitality. In this time of turning away from systems and ways of being which are depleting and limiting, we are nurturing an affirming vision of well-being and healing that is regenerative, restorative, and whole.

We are weaving a new model of medicine that allows the space for transformative insights to arise, leverages the power of love and connection, empowers with healing technologies ancient and cutting edge, and is aligned with nature.

Find out more at www.commonweal.org/ program/nat.

Offered at Natura Institute Art of Vitality Aligned with the seasons, Art of Vitality is an immersive program in transformative wellbeing, of vitality on a personal, interpersonal, and ecological level. Drawing on emerging science and the essence of that which heals, we build community around vitality and deep nature connection.

Co-taught by Anna O’Malley and James Stark.

Four Seasons Permaculture Design Course Continuing the globally recognized Permaculture Design Course taught in the Commonweal Garden, now under the experienced guidance of Lydia Nielsen, participants apply the principals of selfsustaining ecological systems to integrated homes and gardens, sustainable energy and water systems, healthy communities and economies, and a conscious inner landscape.

Regenerative Herbalism Cultivating our relationship with medicinal plants empowers us to create effective, safe, nourishing medicine for ourselves and our families. Further, it reconnects us with our ancestral medicine ways and with the healing wisdom of the Earth. Co-taught by Anna O’Malley and Penny Livingston Stark.

Community Medicine Circles These circles embody a vibrant, effective alternative model of community-based, nature-placed, wellness-oriented medicine.

Ongoing groups explore the foundations of well-being, the ecology of a whole, balanced human being, and a proactive approach for preventing and/ or reversing chronic disease whenever possible. Directed by Anna O’Malley in collaboration with Coastal Health Alliance.

Retreats for Healers The retreats grow a movement dedicated to a medicine that allows healers to be well, does not harm the Earth, and yields stronger, more resilient communities. They mentor those in training and those seeking renewal in their practice of medicine and self-care with immersive experiences in an alternative paradigm. They also embolden healers to find their voice and their agency in speaking for cultural healing.

Cultural Wellness Evolving day-long and weekend offerings reconnect us to cultural wholeness. With programs ranging from instrument making, music as medicine, intergenerational wisdom circles, and rites of passage honoring, we will reawaken our ancestral, human lineage of cultural well-being.

This page: Dr. Anna O’Malley gives a nutrition demonstration.

Opposite page: the Art of Vitality circle meets in Commonweal Garden.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF GINNY STEELE FINCH.

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Visual Thinking Strategies and the Turnaround Arts Program

by Amber Faur, VTS Development and Operations Director The abilities to sit comfortably in ambiguity and struggle and then figure out a solution are skills that will make our children grow and succeed in life. These skills can give our children meaning and purpose in a society with inequitable systems that often take such things away from them. If VTS can lay the foundation for our learning community to think critically, to think with an open mind, to create a safe place to voice opinions, and to learn creative problem solving, then this will be one of the most powerful tools that we can arm our students with to reimagine and rebuild inequitable systems as systems that create a successful future.

—Feedback after year one implementation at Florence Griffith Joyner Elementary School, Los Angeles, CA Commonweal’s Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) is a group conversation about art—a facilitated conversation that engages participants to look carefully at works of art, talk about what they observe, back up their ideas with evidence, listen to and consider the views of others, and discuss many possible interpretations.

Research conducted both by VTS and its partners continues to confirm that this kind of facilitated group conversation is an effective means of developing critical thinking and communication skills in every demographic. These conversations spark interest in the arts, and they also build community and skills that serve to help people bridge conflict and understand each other.

VTS joined the Commonweal family of programs in 2015, and it has been working its magic in museums and schools since the 1980s. Over the years, it has expanded to reach more than a million pre-K, elementary, and middle school

VTS is one of the most powerful models for genuinely engaging young people and changing our perceptions about who can learn and who cannot.

—Carol Johnson, Boston Public Schools Superintendent, MA 8

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students around the world. Today, VTS is also applied in natural science centers, in medical and nursing schools, as a therapy for adults with dementia and patients with brain injuries, and as a tool to support both children and adult English-language learners.

In 2016, the Turnaround Arts program, a project of the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities, chose to fund VTS as one of only two whole-school arts integration strategies to support student engagement, improve instruction, and raise achievement in some of the nation’s lowest-performing schools. This initiative, launched by the Obama administration and now housed at the Kennedy Center, seeks to close the achievement gap and to provide equitable access to the arts in the nation’s highest need and lowest-performing

schools. In the 2016-17 year, VTS trainers worked with groups in 20 new Turnaround Arts schools in stressed communities, such as the South Central neighborhoods of Los Angeles; Bridgeport, CT; Milwaukee, WI; Minneapolis, MN; New Orleans, LA; Brooklyn, NY, and Hawaii.

Now in its second year with Turnaround Arts, VTS is the only arts-integration strategy being recommended and funded as a whole-school strategy for the six schools in Turnaround Arts’ two newest regions: Providence, RI, and Richmond, VA. In total, VTS will be supporting 20 to 25 schools across the country; almost half will be going into their second and third years of implementing VTS. “Through this partnership we have been able to reflect on how we can refine our model to address sustainable long-term full school implementation—and how, as an organization, we can improve our support to these schools,” said Amy Gulden, senior VTS trainer and coordinator of the Turnaround Arts program. “We are proud to be a part of this national program.”

Find out more at www.commonweal.org/ program/vts/. VTS thanks Turnaround Arts, the Panta Rhea Foundation, and our community of individual donors, for their generous support.

Below: Yoon Kang-O’Higgins training teachers at Hawaii State Art Museum in the VTS process.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE VTS PROGRAM.

The Power of the Power of Hope Youth Camp For a week in July, 42 Bay Area youth—participants in the Power of Hope youth camp—transformed Commonweal with their creativity, energy, and depth. They came from Richmond, Sonoma, Oakland, and West Marin, from different narratives and geographies, and from different economic and familial backgrounds.

The Power of Hope youth camp is a national program that has found a Bay Area home as part of Commonweal’s Center for Creative Community, led by Oren Slozberg. It collaborates with a network of partners from around the Bay Area, including Destiny Arts in Oakland, the East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in Richmond, On the Move in Napa, and others. During these times, when challenges and hatred are emerging across the country from Charlottesville to Berkeley, we find inspiration and wisdom in the vitality, diversity, and community that forms at the Power of Hope camps. Here is the voice of Cicero Faur, one of the youth leaders who attended this summer’s camp.

The Power of Hope idea, in a nutshell, is a largely diverse group of creative arts teachers from around the world working together to empower youth and to enact positive change in their personal lives and communities. The camp is a place where people are entirely free of social pressure and judgment, and can be whoever they are or have wanted to be. By creating an all-inclusive melting pot of individuals, both youth and adults are able to explore their ideas of themselves and their society through a variety of hands-on workshops and activities.

On the first day, campers are surprised and relieved to find that social hierarchy doesn’t really exist in the environment.

Every individual has a voice, and everyone has the freedom to talk openly with each other. Quite frequently, perspectives on the world, held by young and old, change throughout the week. Some might be exposed at camp to harsher realities and injustice that they hadn’t been aware of, and be driven to take action. Others may have arrived with a bleak vision of the future, and leave camp with the passion

to fight. The Power of Hope camp is only a week long, but it is such a potent emotional experience that the bonds created there hold like family.

I keep coming back to these words that really embody the spirit of the camp for me: autonomy, freedom, and selfempowerment. At camp, I am able to be vulnerable and open in a way that is simply impossible at home. I can reflect on how I interact with people to become more mindful of myself and those around me. I have no need to challenge people or defend myself against them, and instead, I can focus on how I can do my best to make people feel positive about themselves and the world.

I know how harrowing things are in the socio-political sphere. The state of our environment is even worse. I’ve done my fair share of research, and it has not made me an optimist. Despite my realist view of our species and its impact on earth, the Power of Hope makes me believe that we have a chance in the future.

The Power of Hope program is excited to welcome Chibueze Crouch as the camp manager and coordinator of the Center for Creative Community.

Find out more at www.commonweal.org/ program/c3/. The Power of Hope thanks the West Marin Fund, Germanacos Foundation, New Ground Fund of Marin Community Fund, the Stinson-Bolinas Fund, and many individual donors for their generous support.

Top: Farewell gathering on the land. Below: Camp participants share their musical talents during a jam session.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE POWER OF HOPE PROGRAM.

—Cicero Faur, Camp Participant COMMONWEAL ■ DECEMBER 2017

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W I T H

G R AT I T U D E

We express our deep gratitude to the following organizations that have supported Commonweal this year:

The A&A Fund

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Aberta S. Kimball-Mary L. Anhaltzer Foundation

Applied Materials Foundation The Bellwether Foundation Bothin Foundation

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Clover Stornetta Farms

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The Hale Fund

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Naturepedic

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Santa Fe Community Foundation

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Stinson-Bolinas Community Fund Szekely Family Foundation WBF Foundation

I write to ask you personally to sustain your support for our work at Commonweal.

Commonweal only exists because a small community of people across the country and around the world believes our work has value.

We are deeply grateful to the foundations that support our work.

We are deeply grateful to each of you, who supports our mission.

And we are deeply grateful to all those who contribute their time and talents to our work.

Many program directors volunteer their Commonweal time. So do other Commonweal staff and friends.

Individual contributions are the “glue” that holds Commonweal together. These contributions are also at the heart of many programs that do not receive grants.

Alumni of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program have played an extraordinary role in funding the Cancer Help Program for more than 30 years—and other Commonweal programs as well. We are so grateful for this, as well as for other individual and foundation support.

Commonweal is a small, hand-crafted, unique community in service to people and to all life on earth. In these most difficult times, our work is more needed than ever.

I ask each of you to support our work at the level that works for you. You can visit our webpage, www.commonweal.org, and contribute there. You can send us a check. You can make a monthly contribution on our website with your credit card. That steady flow of support from dedicated members of our community is invaluable.

Some of the most important contributions to Commonweal, especially from Commonweal Cancer Help Program alumni, have come as bequests or as requests for memorial contributions from friends and family.

Other extraordinary contributions have been donations of real estate or other things of value that are no longer needed.

Oren Slozberg, Arlene Allsman, Erin O’Reilly, and I are all available at any time to discuss your interest in our work.

Let’s stay close in these hard times.

With gratitude and warm best wishes, Michael

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Panta Rhea Foundation ●

Straus Family Creamery ●

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The Canary Fund of RSF Social Finance

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Germanacos Foundation

Jacob and Mollie Fishman Foundation ●

Keystone Montessori School

Matthew London and Sylvia Wen Gaia Fund

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Peaceful World Foundation

San Francisco Otolaryngology Medical Group, Inc.

Spaw Family Fund of the Greater Houston Community Foundation Susie Tompkins Buell Fund of the Marin Community Foundation

Tides Foundation ●

Bay Area Young Survivors

Passport Foundation

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Wells Fargo Community Support Campaign The Wyss Foundation

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Muriel Murch Full Circle Endowment Fund

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Samuel Kress Foundation

Schwab Charitable Fund ●

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Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund

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Marin Community Foundation

Morning Glory Family Foundation

Taylor Maid Farms

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Barbara Smith Fund

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Boston University/NIEHS-funded Superfund Research Project

Jacob & Valeria Langeloth Foundation

RSF Social Finance

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AmazonSmile Foundation

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Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund

New Ground Fund

Reflection Fund of RSF Social Finance

Your Support Makes a Difference

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Lloyd Symington Foundation

MMG Foundation ●

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California Wellness Foundation

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Distracted Globe Foundation

Jenifer Altman Foundation ●

Arrow Benefits Group

Bet Lev Foundation

The California Endowment

Geronova Research, Inc. Kitchen Table Foundation

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University of California ●

West Marin Fund

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Wallace Genetic Foundation

The Whitman Institue

and several foundations that prefer anonymity

We offer special thanks and gratitude to the following Commonweal Friends for their generous contributions of $100 and above during the last six months. A full list of all of our donors can be found on our website under “About Us.” (Donations received between 4/1/17 and 9/30/17) Lynda Abdoo Janet Abrahm Donald Abrams David Adams Kathryn Adams Tim Adams Joy Addiego Arlene Allsman Thomas Anderson Edward Atkinson Carol Banquer Herbert Bedolfe Lynne Beeson Carl Belline Patricia Berkov Gayle and Michael Blum Jeffrey Blumberg Nancy Boyce Patricia Bradford Joan Nonie Brady Dianne Bramwell Daphne and Robert Bransten Andrew Buck

Robert Burton Maggi Butterfield-Brown Millicent Buxton-Smith Marlene Candell Tracy Challman Marie Chan Charlene Chang Robert Cheatham Erlene Chiang Luci-Ellen Chun Gina Cicciarelli Bradley Coley John Colla-Negri Maureen and Paul Draper Margo Eachus Catherine Edgett Mary Fitzgerald Susan Fleishman Deborah Koons Garcia Ron Garrigues Gale “Gigi” Gartner Bernard Gershenson Steven Gilbert

Sarri Gilman and Ken Kortlever Paul Goldfinger Peter C. Goldmark Sally Goodwin Cynthia Graham Bess Granby James Grant William Grant Sadja Greenwood Eileen Growald Kerri Gruninger Jeanne Halpern Susan Halpern Grant and Jeannette Heidrich Susan Hester Laurel Hillerson-Spear Christy Hobart Ann Hogle Caren Hovden Charles Hovden Catherine Howard Diane Huerta John Hunting

Richard Jackson Tracy Johnston Susan Karp Rebecca Katz Gary Konkol Harriet Kossman Patricia and Larry Kubal Philip Landrigan Mary Lenox Michael Lerner Leslie Lewis Stanley Lipsitz Daniel B. Magraw Jerry Mander Nancy Mayo-Smith William and Leslie Mayo-Smith Martha McDermott Josephine Merck Jill Moore Fitzhugh Mullan Rayner and Gerald Needleman Laurence Nemirow Sara Nerken

Deane Neubauer Susan Newstead Jodi Nishimura Sylvia Nobbmann Carolyn North Julie Ohnemus Richard Paine April Paletsas Julie Portelli Janet Poutre Caren and Jim Quay Chad Raphael John and Judith Ratcliffe Julie and Spencer Rice Ruth Rosen Mary Russin Pardis Sabeti Maureen and Michael Samson Roger and Vicki Sant Lorna Sass Katherine Saul Jane Charles Savarise Joyce Schnobrich

David Schuster Paula Sheridan Susan and George Simmons Susan Simpkin Jennifer Sivertson Sharon Smith David Spaw Kathryn Stevens Ralph Sutton Kathy Sykes Lois Talkovsky Barbara Tittle, MD Susie Tompkins Buell Wendy vander Heuvel Michael Vargo George Viramontes Lucy Waletzky Mo Washburn Aviva Weiner Joan Wiles Lynn Willeford Carol Wuebker and several anonymous donors

G O PA P E R L E S S !

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COMMONWEAL ■ DECEMBER 2017

Newsletter Editors: Kyra Epstein and Diane Blacker ■ Newsletter Design: Winking Fish ■ Printed on 100% post consumer waste recycled and 100% chlorine-free processed paper with soy-based inks.

P. O . B o x 3 1 6 Bolinas, CA 94924

Commonweal Open House May 20, 2018 SAVE THE DATE

Your support makes a difference this giving season.

Consider a monthly donation, which helps sustain our work.

You Are Here ETHAN OKAMURA at Gallery Commonweal October 9, 2017 – December 29, 2017 Open Monday through Friday, 10 am – 4 pm or by appointment.