We can feel overwhelmed this time of year with our busy calendar, newsfeed exhaustion and the looming holiday season. It’s important to pause and peacefully center ourselves whenever possible. On Tuesday, September 10, 2024, the South Sound YMCA hosted a community event, Breakfast for Belonging, with the goal of fostering connection, inspiration and action throughout the community.
At the Breakfast for Belonging, speakers like Linda Low, Rotary Peace Fellow and International Community Builder, and Gavin Cruz, an Olympia High School senior who is also Lieutenant Governor of the Washington YMCA Youth Legislature, inspired attendees to share personal experiences and hear other’s perspectives.
The South Sound YMCA Celebrates Transforming Communities Through Building Connections
The event took place at Saint Martin’s University’s Worthington Center with the aim of building community through dialog and belonging. Sarah Clinton, YMCA Executive Director of Advancement, shared, “The morning’s theme focused on coming together across differences and developing new skills which allow us to reach across divides to transform our community.”
Attendees were encouraged to use what they learned to take action in our community, and resources were provided to increase our shared skill and capacity to move this work forward. “Whatever direction you choose, move forward with love and curiosity,” encourages Clinton.
The YMCA Welcomes Inclusive Voices from All Ages, Backgrounds and Experiences
Gavin Cruz is an Olympia High School senior. He has been a delegate for the YMCA Youth and Government program for three years and was recently one of the youngest delegates at the Democratic National Convention.
The goal of his speech was simple, says Cruz. “The main theme was to bring communities together and to foster a sense of belonging for everyone regardless of personal opinions,” he explains. “This message needed not to be repeated, but rather it should be repeated with a fresh perspective coming from the youth. This call to action is pivotal to telling local leaders what future you want to give to sustain the leaders of tomorrow.”
His perspective also focused on one very simple ingredient. “Stories like mine are meant to be told to display a message of hope,” says Cruz. “Older leaders who have been in public service for decades feared what our future would look like with all the problems that occur. That’s the importance of youth voices, which are used to share a message of hope. A message of which that we need to come together and find solutions across the aisle.”
After graduation, Cruz hopes to continue working in government or the law. “The Capitol building in Olympia is my second home, and seeing various groups in Olympia it almost feels as if I’m in Washington D.C. A dream when I grow up is to work for one of the major think tanks like the Brookings Institute or veer off into congressional work at the Capitol by being a staffer and eventually being on the ballot in the future.”
Linda Low Believes in Spreading Peace Locally, Nationally and Globally
Keynote speaker Linda Low believes in the importance of global social impact. She is a Peace Fellow at the Duke-UNC Rotary Peace Center and Social Impact Director at APCO Worldwide. “We live in a world of position statements, news headlines and 140-character tweets: a world that forces us to take a point of view in response to a headline,” she says. “But we need to dive deeper, to understand what’s under another person’s position or social media post, and specifically, their values and lived experience.”
Listening from a place of common values, explains Low, helps us react differently and open a dialog into collaboration. “People are hungry for connection,” she says, “so let’s create places and spaces where they can have deep conversations. I want us to facilitate dialogue across difference, to foster belonging, and to reduce conflict.”
One way she and the South Sound YMCA will continue to do so is through their upcoming Great Big Dialog event. This will take place before the November 5 national election and focuses on what she calls “human-first conversations.” These are, she says, “conversations that make us uncomfortable, that make us learn and that make us see different points of view. Also, conversations that bring us together, that enable us to share joy and inspire us, that remind us: we can and will build a better future together.”
Low stresses, change can also be as simple and easy and approachable as the word choices we make. Choosing to be thoughtful about the language and words we use will avoid excluding others from the dialog. She suggests avoiding conversations exclusively with those that share your opinions. “If we’re talking with others that have the same point of view, we’re not really in a dialog; we’re in an echo chamber,” she says. Instead seek out new points of view, ask open-ended questions and practice reflective listening. All of these open the door for meaningful conversations which can change the world one voice at a time.
Keep track of upcoming events on the YMCA’s website, Facebook page, and Instagram page. Create your own breakfast for belonging to connect friends, family, coworkers and neighbors.
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