It was so exciting to welcome Xochitl and Gabriel of Co-op Ed Center to TFD this past Wednesday to lead a restorative economy workshop! Our mentees kicked it off with an ice breaker where they were given a question or statement and if they agreed to that statement, they moved to stand in the middle of the circle. It was fun to learn so many new things about our mentees! We love how involved our mentees were and how many new conversations were started around restorative economy.

Our mentees discussed how a cooperative works and made a list of what a cooperative means to them. One of the groups shared, “A group of people working together to accomplish or achieve a goal”. Afterwards, they came together to combine their ideas.

Photo Credit: Mariah

I’m excited to share we pivoted to an internship/mentorship program. Due to low winter enrollment, it made me take a deeper look at how we can offer our creative workshops in a way where parents, caregivers and teens could see the value in what we are teaching them!

When we experience challenges, I do my best to approach it through an asset lens. I began asking questions like: How can we challenge the starving artist narrative? How can we get parents/caregivers to see the value in letting their teen participate in our programming?

That’s when a paid internship/mentorship concept was born. We are in an essence doing the same thing, but are being more strategic. We are training 5 teens in the areas of photography, film, brand identity, social media strategy and more, while partnering with businesses and organizations in the community. So that our interns can learn to collaborate and gain real world experience as they grow their portfolios….all while getting paid.

Getting paid was a necessary decision if we truly want to be an organization that believes in equity, in which, we consider the needs of our community and actually help to create solutions for those needs.

We are excited for our first paid 12 week internship and can’t wait to see where it goes!

So friends, I’m excited to share our very first cohort of interns with you!

You can learn more about them HERE!