Fellowship updates
This summer, we wrapped our third Fellowship cohort! We want to take a moment to celebrate this amazing group of Fosters from across the state who invested months of their time and energy with us as they took big steps in their leadership and advocacy journeys.
Our Fellowship started in 2021 as a core way to ground our movement building work with Minnesota Fosters. We know that Fosters are incredible individual advocates by nature of learning how to navigate their child welfare cases. But so many in our growing network had never had the opportunity to build skills to translate their leadership towards systems advocacy (let alone be paid for that work!). The Fellowship focuses on Fosters understanding their strengths, passions, and curiosities as adaptive leaders, owning their stories and their boundaries, developing reflective capacity and healing tools for an abundance mindset, and learning about system history, disparities, and power levers. At our cohort celebration, Fellows reflect on what they want to lean into next on their leadership journey. For some, they are focusing on school or parenting so they can come to future advocacy opportunities more resourced. For others, they are challenging themselves with speaking or writing advocacy actions (read the opeds from this cohort!). And several applied to and joined our Community Board for the 2023-24 service term!
As an organization, we believe cultivating community and advocacy are inherently intertwined, and the Fellowship focuses deeply on relationship building so Fosters have a cohort of peers they can lean on and learn with. On a personal note, I want to thank our 2023 Fellows (and the cohorts that have come before them) for the relationships you’ve trusted me with during our cohort time (and beyond!).
Foster Advocates’ work happens through deep relationships and solidarity with Fosters, and it’s been an honor to invest in each and every Fellow as they invest in the mission of Foster Advocates.
The long game of systems change can sometimes be draining (as we talk about in the Fellowship!). I draw inspiration and conviction for this work from witnessing Foster’s imaginative power and deep belief in a future where Fosters receive the supports and justice they deserve.
In spring 2024, we are not holding a Fellowship cohort, as we are focusing on that imaginative power and crafting a new future with Fosters through our ongoing MN Promise campaign. While the Fellowship will be on pause for 2024, it will be back in 2025! For any Fosters who had been planning to apply in 2024, please reach out to me (Elena@fosteradvocates.org) for a conversation about how we can loop you into MN Promise leadership and advocacy opportunities over the next year until the 2025 Fellowship applications open up.
The Fellowship has truly been transformative, for me, for our Fellows, and for our organization, and we look forward to future cohorts as one of the ways we invest in Fosters’ leadership development. We hope our Village will join in this investment through gifts to sustain our programming in 2024 and beyond. Every dollar shows solidarity with our Fosters and supports their advocacy journeys.
In Solidarity,
Elena Leomi
Director of Network and Culture