Our Love Letter to the Movement
CHJL is designed and run by BIPOC folks with a long history of social justice movement organizing.
Through years of organizing with the Bus Riders Union/Sindicato de Pasajeros/버스 승객 조합, Ban the Box, and other important struggles, we experienced victories, heartbreak, growth, pain, and so much richness. These experiences led us to coaching for social justice movement leaders to grow our capacity, resilience, and effectiveness to ultimately win the struggles we are fighting while, at the same time, making sure movement spaces are healing, uplifting, and don’t leave anyone behind.
We believe that through engaging in individual and collective healing and through the victories of social justice movements for those most-impacted by systems of oppression, we will achieve liberation for BIPOC people.
Recentering Cultural Values
Coaching for Healing, Justice and Liberation seeks to uncover and rediscover traditional and adaptive ways of living out our value systems of expansiveness and liberation for collective healing. We do this in a way that leans into the innate resilience and traditional wisdom of the cultures of our participants.
Our Core Values
Being Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) led.
Holding an intersectional anti-oppression analysis that starts with understanding and dismantling white supremacy and settler colonialism.
Healing and self-reflection are necessary for individual and collective liberation.
A just and sustainable world is possible and we are a part of co-creating that world now.
Transformative justice and traditional ways of healing are central to our approach.
through healing and justice we achieve liberation
What We Teach You To Do
Ask transformative powerful questions that elicit clarity and a path forward by identifying core needs
Create effective accountability for oneself and support others to do the same
Create trust and intimacy in relationships
Embody a coaching presence that invites trust and opportunity for growth
Self-manage of your own needs while coaching
Create people and planet-based ethics, emanating from collective and ancestral wisdom to create alternatives to white supremacist, settler colonial culture
Address the impact of implicit bias
Understand and address the impact of white/male/cis/etc. fragility on impacted groups
Undo white supremacy and other systems of oppression internal and external to your body
Guide your coach partner into a process that is liberating for them as an individual and for the collective
We Seek To…
Provide a critical, compassionate, nuanced approach to nonprofit and movement culture
Support participants in our programs to name, navigate, and uproot white supremacy culture in their organizations and communities
Increase the effectiveness of movements and nonprofits by offering coaching skills as a way to heal communities, build coalitions, move through conflict, and undo systemic oppressions within these institutions
Meet Our Team
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Sarah Jawaid
Co-Director & Lead Facilitator
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Damon Azali-Rojas
Co-Director & Lead Facilitator
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Latoyia Hall
Programs Manager
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Ebony Booth
Alumni Relationship Manager
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Steffani Clemons
Finance and Development Manager
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Henry Wai
Cultivator of Virtual Spaces
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Gaye Theresa Johnson
Director of Continuing Education & Lead Facilitator
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Khrysta Robinson
Recruitment Manager
Wisdom Council
Our Alumni and Mentors that help guide CHJL’s priorities and presence
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Serian Strauss
Wisdom Council & Transformative Futures Mentor
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Erin Trent Johnson
Wisdom Council & Transformative Futures Mentor
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Nitika Raj
Wisdom Council & Transformative Futures Mentor
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Jamari Michael White
Wisdom Council & Transformative Futures Mentor
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Mohamad Chakaki
Wisdom Council & Transformative Futures Mentor
A Path Towards Liberation
We are weaving liberation into the fabric of our lives. Liberation begins with identifying how we are impacted by interlocking systems of oppression. Through coaching support we can see that the psychological iron shackles that limit us are, in fact, open.
We want people to come home to themselves and live from a place of joy. Our school seeks to invite individual reflection and transformation while building collective action towards justice.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world; today I am wise, so I want to change myself.”
Rumi, the Muslim poet from Konya
