Components
Stakeholders
Garrison has a long-standing history of integrating contemplative practices with efforts to create systemic social change, convening thought leaders, social actors, and policymakers to address critical challenges through a contemplative lens.
By gathering key stakeholders, mapping the field, building collaborative relationships, and then supporting the application of field wisdom to practical action, we help create a “generative social field.” Individuals and organizations can more easily connect to form cohesive, value-driven movements capable of driving long-term systems change.
Through various programs, such as Contemplative-Based Resilience (CBR), Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE), and the Pathways to Planetary Health initiative, the Institute has applied its field-building model to foster collaborative innovation. This has even led to developing new fields, particularly when traditional approaches fail to address complex, interconnected social and environmental problems.
Mission
The Spirituality & Social Change program builds on this work, exploring the intersection of contemplative practices, spiritual worldviews, and social action. This work is a natural extension of the Institute’s mission to foster systemic change through the wisdom gained through contemplative practices. Rooted in the belief that spiritual organizations offer a unique and adaptive perspective on social challenges, this project aims to identify, learn from, connect, and amplify this growing network of organizations that consider contemplative practice:
- essential to their values
- a core component of their theory of change, and/or
- integral to the way they deliver their particular program model for social transformation
Values
The Spirituality & Social Change work is itself guided by contemplative values. It will embrace reciprocity and regeneration, engaging in field learning collaboratively. It recognizes our interconnectedness and the unique wisdom of lived experience. It will honor diversity, strive for equity, and incorporate margin-centered design. It will embody mindfulness and operate with transparency, humility, respect, compassion, and curiosity.
Components
The Spirituality & Social Change program aims to support a generative field at the intersection of contemplative practices, spiritual worldviews, and social action through the following key components:
Social Systems Map: The Conscious Change Collective
The program will develop a crowd-sourced, social systems map representing a collective of organizations actively engaged in integrating contemplative practice into their social change endeavors.
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By making this field more visible to itself, we hope to support the formation of a collaborative community and foster deeper understanding of the roles contemplative practice and spirituality play in social change. This mapping tool and community is a collaboration between the Garrison Institute and Circles for Conscious Change, called the Conscious Change Collective.
The Conscious Change Collective is more than a “map”, but a dynamic, living, values-driven collective, representing a generative field of wisdom-keepers and practitioners, actively engaged in sharing insight, offering support, and inviting collaboration with purpose and reciprocity for the common good.
Mapping Goals:
- Support the needs and ideas of its members, catalyzing cross-sector learning, connection, and collaboration.
- Raise the visibility, viability, and collective impact of the field. Raising the visibility of the field will help channel additional resources towards the work of its members. Collaboration will support more coordinated action, innovation, efficacy, and sustainability, helping to amplify impact.
- Serve as a dynamic, usable tool for exploring and researching the trends, opportunities, and gaps in this field across a range of lenses. Having the opportunity to explore the field’s complexity may inspire new studies, coordinated projects, or the scale/adaptation of successful models.
- Strengthen an engaged community of actors, connected through the map, to experience a greater sense of belonging and interconnection as part of a living ecosystem.
Field Co-Creators
We feel it essential that a broad representation of the field itself take part, to the extent desired, in co-designing the Conscious Change Collective, guiding the field learning, collaborating in the meaning-making, and informing the direction of the field support. As such, this work will be guided by two sets of advisors:
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- Senior Advisory Council: Diverse, leading thinkers and practitioners, providing thoughts on how this endeavor might best contribute to and shape the field, knowledge gaps, greatest needs and opportunities for its use, perspectives on the relationship between contemplative practice and social impact, and networks of actors.
- Field Co-Creators: Diverse set of actors willing to engage more deeply in guiding the co-creation of the mapping tool, formation of the collective, and shared meaning-making to ensure it aligns with our values and is broadly represented as a field-driven endeavor.
Please contact Director, Gretchen Steidle, if you are interested in joining our community of advisors: gretchen@garrisoninstitute.org
Field Study & Wisdom Sharing
The program will work collaboratively to learn and distill the wisdom that emerges through the mapping endeavor, a field study, and shared-meaning making processes. Through data and case studies, the program will distill insights on the contemplative values, capacities, characteristics, and best practices of organizations thriving within the network.
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It will also explore opportunities for and barriers to deeper investment in contemplative practice and collaboration. Most importantly, it will draw insights on the relationship between contemplative practice and social change. It will endeavor to identify a unifying theory of change for and patterns in the philosophy (why), mechanisms (what), efficacy (how), and social impact of such work. It is hoped that it will spark discussion and further energize a generative community.
Field Study Goals:
- Understand whether and how spiritually-grounded organizations are better positioned to drive systems change and enhance belonging.
- Explore the contemplative drivers of social change: a unifying theory of change, patterns, common values, and/or best practices that help to explain the ways in which the wisdom from contemplative practice influences social change and organizational efficacy.
- Bring validation, understanding, and greater influence to the field through shared wisdom.
Generative Field-Building
Through a series of structured network building, strategic convenings, and field engagements, the project aims to build a connected network of deep relationships, share wisdom and foster a collective sense of purpose and belonging. We also believe that the wisdom from applied contemplative practice supports compassionate leadership, meaningful collaboration, innovation, and organizational efficacy. We aim to strengthen this field’s ability to drive meaningful change and build a cohesive movement toward social and environmental justice.
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Field-Building Goals:
- Support the needs and ideas of its members and catalyze cross-sector learning and collaboration.
- Influence others to learn about and invest in contemplative practice for social change.
- Foster greater visibility and resources for the field.
- Strengthen organizational efficacy, belonging, and meaningful collaboration.
- Enhance collective action, drive innovation, and amplify impact towards systems-level change.
Stakeholders
We are grateful for the generous support of the Freedom Together Foundation that will make it possible to make visible, learn from, and catalyze a generative field at the intersection of contemplative practice, spirituality, and social change.
Team
The Spirituality & Social Change team are experts in the field of systemic transformation and conscious social impact.
Gretchen Steidle
Rachel Bellinger
Sara Taggart
Field Co-Creators & Advisors
A cohort of initial advisors, representing practitioners, activists, researchers, philanthropists, networks, and thinkers from seven countries on four continents working across a range of social issues have been convening since February 2023 to discuss the values, process, and design features of the map. If you are interested in joining our community of advisors, please contact Gretchen Steidle, gretchen@garrisoninstitute.org.