Our latest development team meeting has last Tuesday! And here is a brief update!
We began the meeting with an excercise led by Jessica Lopez Lyman. One person stood on a chair while another person sat behind the chair. Both people looked out at the room and described what they could see. Jessica then shared that the chair represents institutional racism, and asked us to reflect on that. We had some great sharing about institutional power and how for those of us who are "standing on the chair," it is hard for us to recognize our unearned privilege because don't always recognize that the chair is beneath us, we just see the world and think that what we see is the same as what everyone else sees. The exercise helped some of us remember that those who are oppressed by racism are seeing the world from behind huge obstacles, in our example, a chair.
Then, we got into updates. They included:
1. updates - they are coming in! National and local
2. food - our chef at the Carondelet is willing to try to make ethnic foods, and had experience cooking authentic Mexican food. Excellent!
3. money - scholarships and discounts are indeed available, and the process in informal and easy (basically a conversation with Jill and Jennifer)
4. marketing - we have been invited to table at De LaSalle and can investigate individual contacts at public schools to move into marketing
5. We did a little schedule clarification, then moved into larger groups.
This was out last meeting before pep and prep in June! Groups are emailing final lists of needed materials and plans before then.
Remember that you can register for POWER Summit at our website: http://www.csjstpaul.org/celeste_power_summmit_schedule.aspx
See you in June!
Peace,
Esther

Welcome, Spring!
The following is a brief summary of our meeting on March 3.
The environment task force talked about their planning of ice breaker activites, creation of ambience, etc.
The creative action group shared their ideas about individuals they are considering bringing in, as well as visions of what the creative action could look like, including spoken word, visual art: murals, 3-d, art for social change, graffiti artists. We will again have stencils for making POWER Summit t-shirts.
The ending celebration is now the Celebration of Gratitude! We are working on food, music, other activities that will be elements of this.
The waste free people spoke to the issue of waste free in terms of food - sustainable, local food coming from different ethnic traditions. We are looking at Mexican and Hmong ethnic dishes, since those cultures are very present in the twin cities. Again, we will be gathering lettuce from the community garden for a portion of our meals.
The people working on developing the panels shared an exciting pool of community contacts who were considering inviting to share their stories at POWER Summit. The panel members come from international and local backgrounds, are of diverse ages and education levels, and identify with different spiritual traditions.