Dreams Becoming Reality - Reflecting on the Inaugural ELI Trip

In April, my dear friend and ELI co-chair, Ashley Hart, wrote a beautiful blog about turning childhood dreams into realities and what it means to become individuals capable of creating a lasting impact. If you have not read her blog, I encourage you to read hers first because this blog is about the embodiment of that vision. 

This July, The Emerging Leaders Initiative embarked on our first trip to Kenya with a full team of young professionals ages 18 to 39. To give some context, ELI was founded under the principle that an organization dedicated to empowering the futures of tomorrow MUST include young people at the table. That is where ELI comes in – to expand our reach, express our concerns, achieve our goals, create impact, and make sure there is always a pathway for young voices to be heard. So, that is our mission. 
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At our core, Crossing Thresholds is about connection and community building.  We believe in collaboration – building one team, one community, all of us rising together. On this summer’s trip, we took this philosophy and ran with it, creating the first-ever team that was not only American volunteers but also Kenyan volunteers. In other words, we had young people from Crossing Thresholds combined with young people from two partner organizations: Cheza Cheza, and City Shamba “City Garden”. Together, we built and launched an urban garden to supplement the feeding programs at CT’s schools. We did it!  But just as important as the garden, we built a community.

We started with a simple question: how do we build meaningful and lasting relationships in just a week? Because while our goal was to build the garden, our secondary goal was to leave Kenya with a team that felt deeply connected, united by our shared purpose.  Each morning in an effort to encourage this process, we would dance together, playing fun games that pulled us out of our self-consciousness and into the collective experience. Dance drew us into the present moment as we laughed and cried and held each other. 
 
As we let go of self-consciousness, we opened ourselves to the power of empathy and vulnerability. Each day, we offered a new question to the group; and each day, we eagerly awaited the answers of our fellow team members. Bouncing between questions that embraced positivity and questions that challenged us, we created a room of nonjudgement and peace. In our space as a team, we were safe and spoke freely. The true value of creating this kind of space cannot be understated. It became apparent that we shared the same passion for life and the same fears. We wanted similar things for our futures and our families, and we shared the same frustrations in the face of a hostile, divided and ever-changing world. As politically fueled protests filled every city in the US, young Kenyans were pouring into the streets of Nairobi. And so, we talked about why we all felt so unheard and under-represented. We talked about what we wanted from this world and for our futures. 

To give you a sense of the depth of our shared process, I will share some of the questions we asked: 

1. What does it mean to be a human being? A global citizen? 
2. What is your greatest source of fear or stress? 
3. What is justice?  What does it look like in your setting? 
4. Where can you see yourself becoming an agent of change? 

Lastly, we asked everyone to share what they learned about themselves after working on the ELI team. The responses were amazing and will be shared in our next newsletter!

I am beyond grateful to be a part of experiences like this one.  They remind us of what it means to build a meaningful life. Without question, young people are worried and often disheartened.  At the same time, we are hopeful. If we continue to pull together instead of choosing disconnection, we can achieve incredible things. This is what ELI was created to do. We are a reminder of the potential each new generation holds. This was our first trip. We are just getting started. We hope you join us on the journey.  Thank you for believing in us.

- Rebecca Schneider Co-Chair of ELI