HISTORY
After years of relationship building in New Orleans and coordinated organizing and funding efforts to radical Black-led work in the U.S. South, The Weavers Project was officially born in 2016. In February 2017, the Fellowship launched, which started as a response to the reality that Southern, Black-led organizing, as well as work led by women, gender-queer, and formerly incarcerated folks are the most underfunded in the country.
This project formed because of the instrumental work of all of the people that have been involved in this Fellowship since it was a mere idea after the rage of Trump’s election in 2016--kai lumumba barrow, Key Jackson, Marlon Peterson, Nabila Lovelace, Shana M. griffin, Chad Jones, Janice Hsu, Jen Giorgio Das, Allen Frimpong, La Tonya M. Greene, and Willa Conway.
This ongoing and constantly developing project only exists because of the expertise that all of these people have brought, and each person’s willingness to be with the challenge of bringing vision into form. The Inaugural Cohort has been instrumental in shaping the way the Fellowship runs, allowing the Fellowship to support them while putting in work towards the Fellowship – giving critical feedback, helping with curriculum with the retreat, giving leadership feedback to the leadership team and being flexible as the structure was finding its shape. Future cohorts will benefit from the experimentation we did as a group and what we’ve learned together.
To learn more about the Weavers story, read this article in Inside Philanthropy.