Pictured above: Class of 2017 Barr Fellows at the Nyamirambo Women’s Center.
Since the launch of its inaugural class in 2005, the Barr Fellowship has recognized exceptional social sector leaders from Greater Boston, investing in their professional development, and in the development of their senior management and rising leaders within their organizations. Since those earliest years, Barr Fellows have collaborated to bring new resources and opportunity to their communities in varied and creative ways. And, even as some Fellows have been called into leadership roles with new organizations, or within City and State government, they have remained deeply connected and supportive of each other.
As an intentional investment to build that deep level of trust and connection, the Barr Fellowship experience begins with a ten-day group learning journey outside the United States. Each journey is carefully designed to immerse Fellows in a collective, challenging growth experience; build deep relationships among Fellows; and offer inspiration through exchanges with leaders working in another country.
For their learning journey, the 2017 class of Barr Fellows traveled earlier this year to Rwanda, a country that has been taking on the hard work of collective healing and significant community rebuilding since the 1994 Genocide. We invited several Barr Fellows to reflect on the experience – in particular the impact on them of traveling to such a distant place with other travelers they didn’t really know.
Ayele Shakur (BUILD Greater Boston): “Part of what made the learning journey to Rwanda so impactful was the amazing group of nonprofit leaders that I was traveling with. We boarded the plane in Boston as strangers, but returned 12 days later as lifelong friends.”
Colby Swettberg (Silver Lining Mentoring): “The learning journey was an opportunity for each of us to show up and dig deep into what matters most in our leadership, in our communities, and in cultures that extend across the globe. We couldn’t keep ourselves from making connections back to our organizations and openly sharing challenges and solutions in the service of supporting one another. It would have taken many years to create the bonds that grew organically from our learning journey – I’m confident that we’ll rely on one another in myriad ways personally and professionally in the years to come as a result of having shared this experience.”
Dania Vazquez (Margarita Muñiz Academy): “It was great to share the experience with such a wonderful group of people that bring so many different perspectives. They all pushed my thinking in some ways – their questions, their ideas, their vast experiences.”
Reverend John Finley (Epiphany School): “They were so kind to me and let me be myself. They gave me helpful criticism in a spirit of love, and they encouraged me mightily. They are amazing people and I am wildly grateful to have been included in this journey.”
Yusufi Vali (Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center): “The learning journey gave me significant perspective on my work. There is a bigger world out there, and there is amazing work to learn from. I have come back committed to getting beyond the narrow world of my organization. It also gave me great perspective on how a country so torn apart can come together. It helped me understand how important leadership is to building culture, and that realization helped me reflect a lot on my leadership and how it is shaping culture in my organization in positive and negative ways.”
Chaplain Clementina Chery (Louis D. Brown Peace Institute): “The whole experience reminded me that, as a leader, the best way to lead is to trust that others can lead when the time is right. We are all leaders in our own way and in our own time.”
The learning journey is an important element of the Barr Fellowship model. Stepping far away from the day-to-day responsibilities of civic leadership provides an opportunity for professional growth and reflection that could not happen at home. In addition, the “who” of the learning journey is just as important as the “where, what and why.” Barr strives for each class to include a diverse group of leaders from organizations of different types that are working in multiple fields and communities. Fellows learn just as much from each other as they do from the intense itinerary planned to help them learn about the destination.
