Learn Skills for Overcoming Burnout and How to Refuel Your Fire

Learn Skills for Overcoming Burnout and How to Refuel Your Fire

Correction: This training will be offered at 1-2:30 pm Eastern Time/10-11:30 am Pacific Time. This live, online training will enable participants to cultivate resilience-based practices in their own lives and in their organizations, address stress and burnout, and create a culture of sustainable activism. http://bit.ly/OvercomingBurnout_DEIMar26

hello everyone I'm Rita Mendes director of programs at candid and I'm joined today by Arianna Shindo of Raisa collected here in Brooklyn she will be one of our presenters for our upcoming live online training on March 26 skills for overcoming burnout refueling the fire thank you so much for joining us today this will be the seventh webinar in our series all together now conversations and diversity equity and inclusion then I wanted to get the conversation started by asking you a couple of questions the first one is why is it critical for the social sector to discuss the impacts of stress and burnout Arianna okay thanks so much really at that um we really think about in this field right we're in it because we have a passion for justice we have a passion for change and we have a fuel that that pushes us forward and we need the fire that will continue to fuel us and not burn us or worse burn us out and and we really take this seriously at Rize and even if the burnout doesn't always seem urgent right it's it's the cumulative stress it's the little things that add up so sometimes people sit in their jobs and feel that the work isn't actually creating change or they don't have time for the things that matter most in their lives or their voice and their organization isn't valued or they're exhausted Oh is reacting to emergencies in the field yeah and and each of those little things can add up over time to our work to create a culture in the environment that really burns us out or or creates divisions and conflict in our organizations and it impacts the quality of our work and so we want to think about really creating more sustainable activism and I think my work in this area I began doing advocacy strategy for a very big foundation working with grassroots groups all over the world and I was there to focus on how do we build effective advocacy strategies and fight the fight against the man and instead of being able to do that I was often called in to support organizations to deal with what lies under the surface which is the the pain we feel because sometimes our work doesn't have impact distress that this is bringing on our lives the way that impacts our relationships and worse sometimes people would cope in our movements by drinking a lot or by leaving the movement all together and you know we've even had some recent high-profile deaths in the movement suicides large organizations where people are really just saying this work cannot sustain us in this way anymore we need to do something different for ourselves and for our movements so we can really face the challenges that lie ahead and so we begin to see that we can't really separate out the strategies that we have for creating change in the world with the changing of ourselves and the sustaining of our other organizations thank you for sharing that what is your experience in helping organizations implement new practices to be more resilient well fire that fuels is actually a name of a project we have that's really about creating a culture of sustainable activism across teams and organizations and movements and the idea is that we have a network of activists advocates who are able to think about in their own context how do these practices get translated and so how do we affect change across a very small grassroots organization where we work potentially with LGBTQ groups in Uganda versus other groups that we work with around work service providers doing domestic violence work across the United States those the way that they address those and even the issues that they face have to be adapted and looked at very differently and contextualized and we we believe that organizational leaders staff members are the best people to create those shifts and changes in their organizations and so part of fire that fuels is thinking about how do we support and give people the practices and tools so they can impact change in their own context and you know one of those contexts we work in a lot is this humanitarian worker supporting refugees in Greece and in other places and we recently launched a training of trainers there after doing an initial training and so we have kind of advocates there who are to shift these practices and one of me really focus a lot on not only the individual impact but what to stress look like across an organization and so often it looks like different conflict and coping styles and so we do an exercise where they're able to assess and analyze how do you deal with stress and conflict and how does that then impact your ability to resolve it what does that look like and in the organization and they do like a mapping across the room and then they roleplay different scenarios in which they could address and we got word back from that organization that they were able to resolve all these crises that had happened because they could better understand why and how different people are responding differently as to what was happening and come up with the organizational protocols that helps people feel supported known that so that was a big recent win and we keep we keep seeing all those things happen in different ways this different folks we've been training them that's great that's great what's one thing that our participants will be able to do right after the webinar well I think any ideas how how are you able to walk out of this webinar feeling like you have some really concrete practical tools to refuel your fire and so we think you know really stress management we think about how do we balance the demands on our time and the pressures with the resources and our coping methods because we're not going to eliminate them we're certainly not going to work in a field that's not stressful right that's that's the work that's what allows us to have the passion around it is to respond to these really dire issues and yet we have a lot of coping skills and resources the idea is how do you feel like those things have been better balanced in your life how have we given you more coping skills access more resources family supports community supports um spiritual resources things around you that will help create that balance and so we have kind of an assessment called called cope which which is an acronym that helps you assess your organization or your team across different dimensions of resilience in terms of your communication openness to change and flexibility um so that's like a larger assessment tool you can use with the organization and then we have similar tools where you think about developing out some of these strategies in your own life and figuring out who your support people will be to create some accountability around that change it's great we like our audience to get to know presenters as people and not just as Talking Heads so I'm just gonna ask you a very personal question well a fun question rather what is your favorite podcast oh okay well I love you cuz I'm like a little bit of a podcast junkie my first is our organization actually has a podcast called bad feminist making films which is really about how do we decolonize the film industry check it out having what is it both again bad feminists making films feminists making films okay yeah and so we interview some incredible folks my colleagues do the interviewing and really talk about the complexity of some of these issues and storytelling the voice and power so that's the big one that I listen to and then you're for folks who really are interested in thinking more about this healing and care work there's a great podcast called healing justice that has actual practices each week that you can that you can sit and listen to at your desk and then start applying different journaling and meditations and different techniques for folks who actually work in the social justice field and are thinking about Carole earth and then let's see I used to love this one called politically reactive which was with kamau Bell and Hari Kondabolu because I think one of our coping strategies is how to make humor and lay out of the most complex political situations of our times and it helps make them more manageable so yeah I think those would be my top ones wonderful well Arianna this was amazing thank you so much for sharing your experience with us today I'm excited to continue the conversation with you on March 26 this will be a live online training that is free to the public thanks to the generous support of borealis philanthropy we hope that you can join us live or register to receive the reporting to watch on your own time thank you everyone and thank you again Adi and I will be in touch yes thanks so much

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