Connections and Growth: The Expanding Academy Network
A Fellow from Cohort 1 of the Academy Fellowship Program, Kim Kita, is Director of Colorado State University Todos Santos. Here she shares her experiences of hosting Fellows from Cohort 2 for their Gathering in Mexico.
I have a sense of deep, sustaining, warmth this winter that comes from meeting, hosting, and joining the Academy fellows of cohort 2 at the Colorado State University (CSU) Todos Santos Center in December. The workshop included nearly a week of immersion and practice with systems thinking tools and methods, as well as a learning journey to La Paz where we stepped inside the worlds of Noroeste Sustentable (NOS), Ecology Project International (EPI), and Restaurant Prana – organizations led by Fellows from Cohort 1 of the Academy Fellowship Program.
As a fellow in Cohort 1, my practice field was to establish CSU’s Todos Santos Center. We started with a donation of land, and resources to build a small educational center with a big vision to cultivate generations of global citizens and thriving communities through collaboration, experience, and exchange of knowledge.
Kim’s Team in Todos Santos
Sadly, yet as expected, the construction process on undisturbed open desert on the edge of Todos Santos rendered the land temporarily sterile. Through care, attention, and time, the Center’s natural spaces are coming alive again – with hummingbirds, native plants, swooping hawks, and intentional circles of thoughtful people.
In the three years since we’ve been open, we’ve welcomed thousands of people: students and faculty from CSU and across Mexico, Baja California Sur community members studying English, and governmental and non-profit organizations working to fulfill their missions. Hosting the Academy program at the Center is a full circle experience for me, personally and professionally.
I’ve journeyed through years of swimming in uncertainty and challenge, exploring the systems tools as best as I could, not ever knowing if I was even “doing” systems change… for the first time I can clearly see my work through the eyes and reflections of the Academy community, and I know that something is working. Maybe I can’t quite put my finger on it, or quantify the “ROI”, but, like the natural areas at the Center, something is coming alive in new ways and shifting ever so slowly: in myself, in our teams, and in our communities.
My Buddhist background brings to mind the analogy of a mandala, a circular, concentric representation of the universe and its meaning, wholeness, and interconnectedness. To a large extent, my world of these past 5 years has revolved around both the Academy and CSU Todos Santos. So for me, the joining of cohorts and faculty friends in the center of my mandala in Todos Santos brings a sense of humility, confidence, and fulfillment that I didn’t know possible.
As the Academy network expands, so do these opportunities for individual and collective transformation. In the mirror of community and the intersection of our mandalas, we have the opportunity to taste, experience, and actively grow what we want to see in the world.