Collaborative Trainings and Retreats at OAEC
When we opened our doors 30 years ago, OAEC invited movement leaders of key organizations to come to OAEC and make with us a highly unique land-based ‘safer space’ to retreat, rethink, be restored by, and depart with new relationships, strategies, and networks built. Since then, we have hosted hundreds of groups and tens of thousands of organizers, teachers, land stewards, tribal members, farmers, policy makers, government agency staff, philanthropists, and advocates from all over California, the U.S., and around the world to plan solutions for some of the most pressing issues of our time.
We do this broadly in 3 ways: Convening, Facilitating, and Hosting.
Who we work with
OAEC hosts organizations whose work towards environmental and social justice is in line with our strategic priorities.
We apply Resilient Community Design methodology with movement groups at their request. Each engagement can be tailored to fit the group’s particular needs, desires, issues, and opportunities, but is always focused on 1) deepening ecological understanding of their place, 2) strengthening practices of self-governance through collaborative decision-making, and 3) increasing social cohesion and personal welfare through collective work.
OAEC is highly accomplished at convening and/or facilitating challenging but necessary strategic planning and other movement conversations. Several OAEC staff are renowned strategic planning, network management, and conflict resolution facilitators and have been sought out by hundreds of organizations to help guide complex questions to a successful result.
Here’s a sample of some of the groups that have held organizational retreats at OAEC:
- 11th Hour Project
- Alliance for Mission-Based Recycling
- Altman Foundation Partner Gathering
- Ambrook
- American Rivers
- Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders for Civic Empowerment Education Fund
- Asian Pacific Environmental Network
- Audubon Canyon Ranch
- California Academy of Sciences Leadership Team
- California Climate & Agriculture Network (CalCAN)
- California Salmon & Steelhead Coalition
- California Trout
- Catalyst Project
- Center for Ethical Land Transition
- Center for Story-based Strategy
- Chisholm Legacy Project
- Climate Justice Alliance
- Deep Medicine Circle
- Defensible Space Collective
- Dolores Huerta Elementary Staff
- Dr. Rajendra Singh Water Workshop
- Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA)
- Global Alliance for the Future of Food
- Indigenous Environmental Network
- Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity
- Jobs with Justice San Francisco
- Just Transition Alliance
- Justice Funders
- Kataly Foundation
- Kitchen Table Advisors
- Laird Norton Family Foundation
- Lavender Phoenix
- Lead the Charge
- Libra Foundation
- Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project
- National Housing Law Project
- Native Movement
- Natural Resources Division – Golden Gate National Recreation Area
- New Universal Wisdom and Leadership Institute
- North Bay Organizing Project
- Oakland Unified School District, Racial Healing Retreat
- Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley
- Pachamama Alliance
- Pangea Legal Services
- People’s Solar Energy Fund
- RE-volv
- Resilient Strategies
- Skyline Foundation
- Sogorea Te’ Land Trust
- Soul Camp
- Sustainable Economies Law Center
- Taproot Earth
- Thurayya
- UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics
- WildEarth Guardians
- YLabs
Movement Building Retreat Fund
Many of our partner groups are grassroots, community-based organizations with quite modest budgets, but are doing some of the most amazing, impactful work we know of. Many of these groups cannot afford to come to OAEC at our full cost – a price that is very reasonable for larger or national non-profits, but out of reach for so many other smaller but still very important groups. With funding for our Movement Building Retreat Fund, OAEC is able to say yes to our small-but-mighty partner organizations doing key environmental and social justice work to hold their trainings and retreats at OAEC and benefit from the unique inspiration, education, collaboration, and services that we provide.
If you are interested in making a donation or grant to our Movement Building Retreat Fund, please reach out to us at development@oaec.org.
