This past Sunday evening members of November Project Chicago came together to hold space and offer up their thoughts, feelings, and reactions to the blog post by Maggie MayKei, NP Brooklyn co-leader, and the November Project headquarters response regarding the pervasive white privilege of our organization as a whole. If you haven’t read either blog post yet, we would recommend taking the time to read and reflect. Thank you to everyone who showed up on short notice and shared their evening with the community. For those of you unable to attend we want to recap the discussion and some outcomes. Some members shared their own stories, and we thank you for speaking up and sharing your experience. Some members asked questions, and we thank you for asking questions that hold the organization accountable. And some members had suggestions on ways to improve.
One of those suggestions was to develop November Project Chicago specific community agreements or an NPCHI specific mission statement. Similar to signing the waiver before coming to a workout, these would be the community norms that we expect anyone who shows up to agree to abide by and operate under. The co-leaders of November Project globally got together last August and brainstormed the ideas and thoughts that became the Community Agreements. We want to take these and develop a measurable accountability plan for Chicago.
If you would like to have input in this project, please email us to join the working group! Novemberprojectchi [at] gmail [dot] com or click here to leave us a comment and provide your name and email to get looped in.
Comment box? Yes. It is far overdue for there to be a way for members to provide anonymous feedback to the co-leaders of November Project Chicago. We have created a Google form that asks for your feedback or your ideas. This will always be available on our Linktree and here. It will always be optional to provide your name and contact information.
Another suggestion we received, which was also echoed in the member survey, was to extend the welcome committee past someone’s first day. The first day is exciting! We introduce you to the group, folks hear your name, you get extra attention, and you go home with a great feeling. But on your second day you’re still pretty new, and maybe you don’t know anyone else yet, or the one person you talked to last week isn’t here! You’re still not sure what a Fonda is, or a bear plank, and why do we sing happy birthday so slowly? So we would like to create NPCHI ambassadors. Every workout there will be members available to ask questions, get connected to on the social pages, or simply be a face and a name you know. Ambassadors will be designated in some way, and their ambassadorship will last for the entire workout, and then next week we’ll have different ambassadors. The entire community already steps up and acts as leaders–organizing long runs, putting together birthday scavenger hunts, exploring new parks for workouts–this is just another way for our community to shine.
Building off the idea that NPCHI is full of leaders, we want to invite you to be a guest co-leader. Yes, you. Coming up with workouts can be daunting, showing up to a large group workout might be outside of your comfort zone, and/or travel/time commitments to getting to a workout might be keeping you from stepping up. We’d like to remove those barriers and ask for membership to sign up to be guest co-leaders for the entire month of November. On Wednesdays you will lead the global November Project workout designed by another NP city. On Fridays you have the chance to come up with your own workout. The sign-up sheet is here. Please provide your email address so that we can add you as a co-host to the Zoom meeting. Either Nez or Kaitlyn will be available for technical support, but otherwise, this is your hour. It’s your music, it’s your vibe, it’s your time to shine. We look forward to getting some new faces on the screen.
Lastly, we realize that this community wants to gather on a regular basis. So for the time being, as we are still in a global pandemic, we will be holding Zoom-based community gatherings on the last Sunday of the month from 6-7:30pm CT. The dates of the next six gatherings are below, and will be added to our Google calendar and Facebook events. A Zoom link to join will be available on our Linktree the day of the gathering.
November 29
December 27
January 31
February 28
March 28
April 25
Thank you for continuing to show up for each other. We’re so glad you’re here.
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