In just a couple of weeks, we’ll be releasing our inaugural Possibility Logs, an annual-report-style reflection on our first two years. Volume I: Our Journey Since Launch is a humble sharing of stories created, partnerships built, and lessons learned since we started this journey in September 2020.
Partners want to be co-creative, but more expansively so:
Automating transactional infrastructure (e.g., streamlined financial reports) to improve cumbersome processes was the first step in our co-creation process. And we learned from early conversations, such as with Ain Bailey from New Seneca Village, that partners don’t want a transactional “babysitter” to pull reports—they want strategic partners who can help with out-of-the box thinking.
Co-creation became less about us just building a new suite of technical tools tailored for social movements, but in how these tools make the space for a generative partnership to even exist. Our information infrastructure pulls automatic financial reports without any of us chasing down numbers. Instead, we have the time back to co-create together new enterprise solutions such as e-commerce, stock sales, land purchases, horizontal leadership structures, and multi-stakeholder cooperative models.
Beyond the tools for success, though, what inspires us most towards a philosophy of co-creation is the community wisdom that grounds and guides many of the movement leaders with whom Possibility Labs has partnered. Below, we share some words of wisdom from the leaders of Discover Community Café, CALOR, and Indigenous Healing Center.
Krystle Chipman | she/her
Founder of Discover Community Café
FSP since April 2022
“Co-creation means creating space for diverse people who reflect the community, to use their gifts and genius to design, plan and build something amazing together.”
Discover Community Cafe leverages the power of food and community to create good jobs for women overcoming barriers to employment, champion local entrepreneurs & businesses, and cultivate a space that ignites connection and honors the greatness in every human.
Mauricio Nuñez | he/him
Founder of CALOR
FSP since May 2022
“Co-creation is a dance of interconnectedness. Experiencing this relational process enables us to create with each other. It’s the ability to connect, synchronize and align with how each of us is moving. Systems transformation is an investigative journey outward to the macrocosm as well as an inward to our own perceptions. With all those cosmologies and ontologies, this dance moves us towards communion on this path of co-creation.”
CALOR exists to support Indigenous peoples’ culture, livelihoods and leadership in landscape governance and integrated landscape management by providing capacity building, technical assistance, and access to finance and markets.
Luna Hernandez Ramirez | she/her
Co-Executive Director, Operations & Community Relations at Indigenous Healing Center (IHC),
FSP since July 2022
“On our journey so far as an emerging Native organization, we have learned that we must hold fast to our values, principles, worldviews, and cultures, because we’re navigating stress systems that are not designed to meet our basic needs. If we are truly to create or revitalize systems that meet all our needs and are grounded in the freedom and self-determination of all our relations, then we should collectively hold ourselves to our core, as we design helpful systems for our future generations.”
The INDIGENOUS HEALING CENTER (IHC) project, located on unceded Coast Miwok traditional territories, promotes and strengthens spaces for Indigenous families and communities within a framework of visibility, participation, healing, research, spirituality, specific and collective rights, self-determination and self-sustainability, cosmovisions and sciences of Indigenous Peoples.
