In August 2021, the Tulane Mellon Fellowship welcomed its 2021 cohort with a retreat at GrowDat Youth Farms. This retreat served as a way to introduce the new cohort both to the program and to each other, facilitating meaningful reflections on what it means to be a Tulane Mellon Fellow and helping to foster new connections between our fellows and community partners.
This year’s retreat was held at the GrowDat Youth Farm, located on a seven-acre site in New Orleans’ City Park where each year GrowDat’s program operates a sustainable farm that produces 32,000 pounds of produce for the community by empowering, educating and working with a diverse group of young leaders to carry out the meaningful work of growing healthy food. The dynamic space provided a safe and beautiful natural setting for this year’s outdoor Tulane Mellon Graduate Program retreat.
New Tulane Mellon fellows, community partners, Tulane faculty and staff kicked things off with ice-breakers focused on joyful movement, introductions and taking a look at the Tulane Mellon Handbook together. This was followed by a presentation by former Mellon Graduate Fellow Caleb Smith that focused on a history of Tulane’s relationships within local communities and community engagement. Other presentations by other former fellows Carolina Helena Timoteo de Oliveira and Dara Abramson, focused on exercises, small group work and larger discussions focused on the topics of identity, unity and accessibility.
Following this introspective work, Carol Bebelle led and moderated a panel where the new cohort had the opportunity to hear from former fellows and community partners about the challenges and rewards of undertaking community engaged work. LaTasha Bundy spoke about her project focused on the cataloguing and conservation of the audio scape of Preservation Hall, and shared how her work as a fellow has transformed beyond graduation and her participation in the fellowship and Tulane.
Other former fellow Jarrod Wall and his community partner Thad Tatum spoke before the group, outlining their work with formerly incarcerated persons. The two panellists described their journey toward partnership, their work and shared advice on how to find and form meaningful relationships with community partners in order to undertake successful and impactful community-engaged work.
Finally, the session concluded with an active workshop on Personal Justice and Social Justice, led by Assistant Director for Outreach and Prevention at the Tulane Counselling Center Jinaki Flint, PsyD. This workshop focused on breathwork, grounding and reflection about the emotional and personal side of social justice related work. This proved to be one of the most important points of the retreat, as new fellows were introduced to the idea of self-care as integral to their work in the fellowship. We are incredibly grateful to have the knowledge and perspective of Jinaki Flint, as a new additional support for the program and cohorts.
This retreat, followed by a dinner reception also hosted at GrowDat farms, served as an excellent introduction to the program for the new cohort. The new cohort was able to learn about the program, themselves, and each other. We look forward to watching the relationships, ideas and positive energy initiated at this event grow and flourish, as members of this years’ cohort join the Tulane Mellon family.