2011 Plenaries

Just announced: The 2011 Plenaries!

Welcome and Orientation
 Thurday, Nov. 3rd, 3-5pm

Welcome to MMMC 2011! In this session, we’ll begin to create the supportive and challenging space we hope to hold for the weekend. We will get to know each other through a group activity, learn about the goals for the MMMC retreat, Resource Generation’s mission and values, and introduce the basic principles of what we mean when we say “leveraging privilege for social change.” This will be a time to ground ourselves in the personal, political and skill-building work that we are here to undertake together as a community.

Facilitators: Mike Gast and Elspeth Gilmore

Activate & Communicate: Behind the Scenes of Leveraging Privilege for Social Change
 Friday, Nov. 4th, 7:30pm-9:30pm

After a day of transformative reflection, learning how create connections to social justice movements, and building authentic relationships, join us for a lively discussion on bridging the gap between talking the talk and walking the walk - and the journey it takes to get there.
Hear fellow Resource Generation members communicate, from their personal perspectives, the path they took - and are taking - to understand their wealth. Learn they how chose to activate their access to privilege to practice social change activism and social change philanthropy. You’ll see that this is a dynamic process of communication (and miscommunication), creativity, and learning through doing. Acknowledge the contradictions and explore what it means to practice within a spectrum of theory and action.

Part lively talk-show and part small-group discussion, this interactive plenary promises to provide you with concrete examples of young people with wealth successfully navigating complex feelings about money and social change. Yes, it’s possible!

Host: Andrew Pearson

Talkshow panelists: Burke Stansbury, Elokin Orton-Cheung, Emily Cramer, & Farhad Ebrahimi

Money Stories
 Saturday, Nov. 5th, 3-5pm

Money stories is the opportunity to share the history - the knowns and the unknowns - of where our wealth and privilege comes from, whether its in the context of your own life or a multi-generation legacy.  It’s our opportunity to come together as a developing community to listen and publicly share our personal and families stories about money and class - and in so doing, break one of the biggest taboos about having money - talking about it.  Money Stories is a cross-class space, and we honor the experiences shared by people from all class and wealth backgrounds and uphold the utmost confidentiality.  

The program will begin with a centering activity, followed by hearing from three conference attendees who will share a five-minute version of their money story.  Each person in the room will then have the opportunity to share a one-minute version of their money story.  We’ll close with another centring activity, and then move into time with our pods to think more deeply about the experience.

Money Stories can be a lot of things - new, liberating, tough, exciting, energizing, mobilizing, galvanizing, inspiring, overwhelming, alienating, cathartic - but it’s an incredible opportunity to step into your courage and use your voice to tell a story that feels authentic about your money or privilege.  Equally, it’s an amazing chance to really listen and hear some of the threads of similarity that run through many people’s experiences, and to marvel at the difference and variation of experience in the room.  The stories people tell about money have great power - this is a chance to claim some of that power and tell a full story.

Facilitators: Sarah Chiddy

Money Survey Results and Action Planning
 Sunday, Nov. 6th, 9:30am - 10:30am

After a weekend of intense learning and absorbing new information, we will discuss the findings from the voluntary and anonymous written money survey you completed this weekend. We will also spend time creating concrete action plans to draw upon after MMMC.

The money survey is a chance to break the taboo of silence around numbers. The act of discovering your access to resources can begin to help you take more control and start those critical conversations with your family, and your peers, about these often unmentionable subjects. This is a moment of opportunity to understand the potential to leverage your privilege for social change, and clearly see the aggregated power of your community.

The action-planning builds off our experiences throughout the weekend of sharing our stories and begins to form a vision for how we would to like to interact with our privilege moving forward. Within this powerful discussion, you will see the collective wealth, access, and inspiration from the community within which you belong. It's one of the last opportunities to unpack your experiences and find solidarity in the new knowledge you've acquired this weekend.  We will intentionally plan the actions that we intend to take in our personal lives, our families, and in our communities.

Facilitators: TBA

Closing Plenary
Sunday, Nov. 6th, 12:30 - 1pm 

This is an opportunity to look back on the retreat experience, appreciate each other, and think about how we are going to take what we've learned back into our lives outside of MMMC. It's always a special time. We hope you can plan your travel so that you won't have to rush off early.

Facilitators: Mike Gast and Elspeth Gilmore.