​OVERVIEW AND REQUIREMENTS

At the six- to eight-month CoreAlign Speaking Race to Power fellowship, a cohort of 15-18 fellows form a learning community to learn and iteratively practice foundational frameworks, mindsets, skills and tools to strengthen their capacity to facilitate productive breakthroughs of race and power obstacles.

Through experiential learning in the retreats and by applying skills, frames and tools to the development of their projects, fellows learn and practice the following leadership competencies:

• Emotional and social intelligence
• Resilience (including empathy and how to repair and recommit to relationships after a rupture or conflict over race and power)
• Skills in holding and navigating complexity and ambiguity
• Innovation

Addressing issues of race and power is not a one-off event, but requires multiple attempts and iterations, and a commitment to long-term work. You will have the support of faculty and staff instruction, innovation techniques, peer coaching and feedback. Speaking Race to Power is designed for a multi-racial cohort of white and people of color participants.

Goals of this fellowship:

1. Develop a shared baseline understanding of the different levels of racism (individual, interpersonal, institutional and structural) and how they manifest in our work
2. Increase our awareness of how empathy, curiosity and resilience shape our ability to speak race to power as leaders
3. Cultivate co-conspirators across differences in race and power to equitably share the risk of disrupting the racial status quo
4. Feel equipped to navigate differences in race and power with tools, strategies and practices
5. Build a positive and supportive community in which to practice and receive ongoing support for speaking race to power in their movement work

CANDIDATE REQUIREMENTS:

• Candidates should be curious, generous, generative and collaborative, and willing to lean into risk and discomfort.
• Candidates must have self-awareness and the capacity for self-stewardship, and open to additional development in this area.
• Candidates should understand and agree with a structural analysis of racism, and ready to develop a project idea*, conversation, inquiry or activity related to breaking through barriers to collaboration and movement-building caused by issues of race and power.
• Candidates should understand that both they and their peers will make mistakes as part of the learning process. Fellows will be asked to practice making and accepting repair and recommitting to the learning community after conflict arises. 

*Applications from both individuals and teams (two or more people) are accepted. Each team member should apply individually and note the other group participants on their application. We admit based on individual applications and will do our best to keep teams together, but might not always admit all members of a group.

CANDIDATE COMMITMENT:

Fully participate in the eight-month program, which includes:

• Attending two weekend retreats:
  • a four-day, three-night retreat at the beginning of the fellowship on December 8-11, 2016
  • a four-day, three-night retreat at the end of the fellowship on June 8-11, 2017
• Participating in two webinars offered between retreats, and one offered before the first retreat
• Participating in peer coaching with cohort members virtually or in-person
• Developing projects independently and in peer-coaching groups
• Completing and submitting a creative final activity after the second retreat that answers the question, “Why risk speaking race to power?”

SLIDING FEE SCALE:

CoreAlign strives to engage with as many leaders as possible to create large scale behavior and culture change in the reproductive health, rights, and justice movement. As we began our programs, we fulfilled this commitment by covering the entire cost of each fellow’s participation in our programs. As CoreAlign matures as an organization, we are transitioning to a sliding scale for program fees and will provide a limited number of travel scholarships to participants. This will ensure that our programs will continue to engage and train leaders for many years to come. Since we recognize that this is a shift for participants, we will phase in our sliding scale model throughout 2017 beginning with an initial scale that requires a limited investment by participants. By 2018, we will have transitioned to our final program fee sliding scale.

CoreAlign invests approximately $10,000 per participant to provide each 8 month Fellowship cohort experience. Our costs include curriculum development and delivery by our faculty, fellowship materials, accommodations at our retreat sites, staff time and resources. The generous support of foundations allows us to provide a sliding scale for our program fees that are within reach for a wide range of individuals and organizations. The following chart covers training fees based on an organization’s most recent annual budget or a foundation’s assets:

• ​Non-profits budgets over 4M:  $1,000
•  Non-profits budgets 1M - 3.99M:  $500
•  Non-profits budgets under 1M:  $ 250
•  Individual:  $150

Learn about our faculty here.
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We are now accepting applications for Cohort 6 (June 2017 -December 2017). Apply online here.
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Have questions? Check out our Fellowship FAQ!