The Mission of the Listening Partners program is to provide sacred space where African American women come together to share stories , listen and support each other’s challenges, goals, and ideas. In our formative years when Wisdom mentored black and brown pregnant and parenting teens and single young adult moms, a 19 year old participant shared her mentoring testimony saying “everyone deserves someone who will listen to them without judgment.” This is when our mentoring program was named Listening Partners and outreach became multigenerational.
Listening Partners are Knowers and Seekers. Programming seeks to actualize the power of healing for African American womanhood through the lens of evolutionary revolutionary love. Knowers and Seekers’ combined wisdom, acquired through lived experience, serves to support each other’s healing journey with the goal of living whole liberated lives. In the process we build a community of trust. The women who embrace this community of trust are those who know they have been invited in by Spirit, and evolutionary revolutionary love is one of the most powerful ways of owning empowerment– having a chance to tell the stories closest to our hearts and to have someone really listen. Listening Partners tell each other things that are important to what they care about deeply. Listening, holding sacred space, actualizing power and healing for African American womxnhood opens the way to being engaged in womxn-centered advocacy spheres of healing justice, gender justice and the right to human personhood that Wisdom has particularized as reproductive justice, birthing rights, ending water shutoffs through the enactment and full funding of a water affordable plan and the right to counsel, a law passed in Detroit in 2022 to provide a lawyer for those threatened with eviction or displacement.
As a means to an end, Wisdom seeks to build a community of trust. The women who will end up in this community of trust are those who know they are invited in by Spirit.
Program Description Methodology It is a fact that listening, without judgment, is more important now than ever. Listening has the power to release African American womxn from society’s oppressive attempts to make us invisible, unheard and deviant. Through experience and studies we know effective listening is deep connecting. Storytelling is a release that allows us to gracefully unravel trauma and life experiences. It makes us visible and manifests the power to live whole person lives. Instead of “blowing up, we can stand up and deal with the pressure”. We invite multi-generations of womxn, ages 18+, to answer a call to power by stepping into Wisdom’s conscious practice of listening to a soul for personal and community evolution by participating in the services offered by Wisdom Institute.
Partner Matchup – Mentorship Listening Partner knower, guide, seeker, are matched-up and hold 1:1 listening experiences. Knowers and guides submit monthly reports that are evaluated for effectiveness. Match ups are done via 1:1 video interviews and knower applications and seeker surveys synthesis.
Listening Circles – 1x month per 9 mo program cycle Listening Circles are monthly, 2 hour sacred social gatherings open to the public during enrollment period. Circles will employ group mentoring and peer-to-peer mentoring activities to practice the Art of Listening. AA womxn and our accomplices gather to listen and share life experiences, knowledge, needs and aspirations; to cultivate wisdom, healing and personal growth to live whole liberated lives utilizing a womanist lens.
Wisdom Lessons – 2x per 9 month program cycle Wisdom Lessons is a learning space facilitated by AA womanist leaders in the community. Attendees sign up to become program participants. Cafe’s are 1.5 hours, held quarterly and feature workshops in “real time”, performance art, training, lectures, and art-making that promotes evolutionary- revolutionary love, healing or promotes one of WI’s healing modalities. Storytelling Spoken word Fire Build Tapping Goddess Doll making Vision Boarding Crafting Belly Dancing
Listening Sessions – 2x per 9 month program cycle. Listening Sessions are facilitated discussions designed to capture the full experience of AA womxn in Michigan communities, collectivize and make more visible challenges, scope of disparities,self-determined advantages, emergent strategies and policies that address reproductive justice, voting rights, birthing rights, ending water shutoffs and evictions in perpetuity.
Art of Listening Trainings 2 four-week sessions 9 monthprogram cycle Art of Listening 101: Explore ways to be more present with others. Examine issues that could impact listening and productive conversations.Understand and apply listening skills. Art of Listening 201: Prerequisite complete 101 and demonstrate paraphrasing.
Annual Listening to the Voice Within Retreat and Ceremony Program participants connect deeply to renew their energy and commitment to the program.
