What is Connection Café?
Welcome to the Connection Café blog. We’ve heard that changemakers, particularly women, are feeling the weight and burden of sustaining their work and wellbeing amidst continuous uncertainty and change. We’ve heard there’s a longing for meaningful conversations and a space for connection, reflection and sensemaking. That’s why we’ve initiated Connection Café – a space for changemakers to nourish their hearts and work through meaningful conversations that are grounded in relationships and good practice.
This is an experiment. We want to co-design this with the people who engage with us. We will be asking everyone who participates to share their thoughts in a feedback survey at the end of each session and we invite you to connect with us individually anytime to share ideas and suggestions.
Our first Connection Café will kick off in November and we are really pleased that the first meaningful conversation we’re hosting is focused on Supporting Safer, Braver Spaces to talk about intersectionality, antiracism and anti-Black racism. I’ve seen over and over in my life and work how conversations can help to humanize these big issues. Through deep, active listening, using the principles and practices Chanel Grenway will guide us through, we can demystify and humanize these issues, and make these conversations part of our everyday life and work.
I do hope you can join us. The third Wednesday of every month we will invite a changemaker to host a meaningful conversation grounded in our audience’s need to converse about subjects critical to enabling holistic change. Topics will focus on changemaking from the inside out. We hope it will be a welcoming space for connecting with other changemakers and learning / practicing to nourish and sustain yourselves and your teams. We will ensure that the conversations we start in the Café continue in a private Linkedin group where participants can continue to connect, share resources and experiences. We look forward to your feedback as we co-create this new space.
Lisa Watson and Tanya Darisi
Co-Founders, Openly
Openly is a Certified B-Corp committed to fueling the hearts and work of a million changemakers by 2025. Through everything we do, we work to advance equity, dignity and justice for all; and contribute to a healthy, vibrant planet today and for the future. To find out more about us and to meet everyone on the Openly team, click here.
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Read more about Openly’s Connection Café
Reflections: Supporting Braver, Safer Spaces
We recently launched our very first Connection Café, an interactive monthly workshop with the purpose of engaging women and allied changemakers in meaningful conversation.