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California Fellowship for Leaders in Early Care, Learning, and Health

 

The early childhood education field is vast, extending far beyond schools and childcare centers. This inaugural interdisciplinary cohort-based leadership development program will cultivate a strong next generation of leaders in early care, and build unity and partnership across this sector. We need movement leaders who are ready to fortify their skills towards a vision of high quality, affordable, accessible, and equitable educational systems for all children.

Rockwood is proud to share that we have partnered with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to offer this transformative fellowship to support leaders working in roles that support all children, focusing on birth through age five.  Especially as COVID-19 and contemporary social uprisings highlight the systemic racist inequalities, this fellowship will create networks of support as leaders fight for more equitable systems to support children from birth through age five.

About The Fellowship

SESSIONS

There will be a total of five sessions, each 3 days and two nights amount of time. Training session locations and format are subject to change as we continue to respond to the needs brought on by COVID-19. The health and well-being of participants are prioritized so all social distancing protocols will be met and may result in sessions meeting virtually.

All sessions will be virtual or in-person as listed, but in-person sessions may switch to virtual if needed. If sessions are held in person, they will occur within the San Francisco Bay Area, Central Valley, and Central Coast.

Each training session will include the following components: leadership practice, relationship and community building, and field-specific specialized content.

Curriculum will draw on the Art of Leadership—Rockwood’s foundational five-day program that teaches the critical personal and organizational leadership skills necessary for lasting social change leadership including visioning, listening, speaking, presentation, coaching, collaboration, and feedback skills. Subsequent sessions will draw on Rockwood’s extensive body of curriculum to advance learning about leadership and collaboration, provide fellows with opportunities to deepen relationship with one another, and integrate practices across their organizations and the field overall. Diverse field experts will join throughout the fellowship to address field specific needs. The curriculum is dynamic as it will shift to the needs of the cohort.

Please know that with our current capacity, this fellowship will be held primarily in English. Our trainers will be able to provide light support in the form of translation and closed captioning in Spanish.

  • Session 1: Sunday, October 2nd – Tuesday, October 4th, 2022 (Virtual)
  • Session 2: Sunday, November 13 – Tuesday, November 15, 2022
  • Session 3: Sunday, January 22 – Tuesday, January 24, 2023
  • Session 4: Sunday, March 5 – Tuesday, March 7, 2023
  • Session 5: Sunday, April 23, – Tuesday, April 25, 2023

TRAINERS

Eva Young

Building on 25 years of experience, Eva engages individuals and teams in transformative processes to achieve long-term, positive, and sustainable change. As a coach, Eva supports leaders in exploring choices to engage in meaningful and impactful actions in their personal and professional lives. Eva specializes in leadership development, ontological coaching, retreat and group facilitation, team effectiveness, organization culture change. Her work is centered on racial justice, equity, inclusion, and women’s empowerment. Eva has a master’s degree in social and organizational learning from George Mason University, is a certified coach from the Newfield Network, and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) Community Fellow. Eva keeps deepening her own understanding and practice of mindshift learning, intersectionality, power dynamics, somatics, behavior change, and mindfulness. She works collaboratively within the philanthropic, public, non-profit, labor, and private sectors. Eva was born and raised in Panamá in a multiracial family, and currently lives in Washington, DC.

Yeshi Neumann

Yeshi has had 2 principal callings for her work in the world. Since 1988, Yeshi has facilitated hundreds of workshops and trainings on leadership, women’s leadership, white privilege, racism and other social oppressions, conflict resolution, communication, family healing and mindfulness.  For the last 11 hears she has been a trainer with Rockwood Leadership Institute. She has been an actively practicing midwifery since 1970, receiving new life into her hands in people’s homes and hospitals.  Her work of “catching babies” has been infused with her passion for women’s empowerment and is inseparable from her dedication to making affordable, respectful, culturally relevant health care a right for everyone, and not a privilege. She has 2 Masters Degrees, one in Medieval History and one in Public Health. Yeshi is the mother of 2 daughters and the grandmother of 4 granddaughters all of whom were born into her own hands. She loves to practice Qi Gong, dance and be in rivers, lakes and oceans.

Additional Program Offerings

Peer Coaching

Coaching is both an important leadership skill, and a resource for social change leaders. During the fellowship, leaders will choose another fellow to engage in a peer coaching relationship over the course of the program. Fellows will commit to a minimum of one peer coaching meeting per month during the fellowship.

Professional Coaching

Individual coaching combined with intensive training supports participants to integrate changes back home and at work. A pool of coaching hours provides for 2 coaching sessions per participant during the fellowship.

Family Care Reimbursement

Family care costs can be a barrier to full participation in residential trainings that require participants to travel away from home. This budget creates a pool of funding for reimbursement for at-home family care that Rockwood will administer.

Funds for Substitutes

While host-schools or centers are encouraged to support applicants by providing substitutes, there is a pool of funds to contribute a portion of costs incurred to hire substitutes for full participation in residential trainings.

Costs

Full tuition, accommodation, and all meals during the training session are covered. Rockwood expects that organizations, employers, and supervisors will provide support for participants to be fully present and attend the trainings.

There will be a pool of travel reimbursement funds open to all participants in the program. Additionally, a pool of funds is included to contribute to family care and substitutes while participants attend the training sessions.

Rockwood Community Call

A'dahi Baira

healing justice practitioner, community organizer, wellbeing strategist

November 7 | 12 PT/3 ET

Elizabeth Delgado