Phase One: Training

Phase Two: Development

Phase Three: Seed Funding

Phase Four: Apprenticeship

Personal Transformation

Global Grassroots does not believe in the concept of "empowerment" because we see people as already inately powerful. We help vulnerable women uncover the power within themselves. In mapping out their gifts, assets, and capabilities, they deepen their sense of agency and autonomy, and identify ways to make their own unique contributions to the common good.

We believe leaders must invest as much in inner transformation as in outer solutions to avoid the pitfalls of power that can derail positive change, including burn-out, corruption, etc. Phase 1 of training focuses on mindfulness, meditation, breathwork, movement, ethical leadership, self-expression, and personal growth work. We help participants expand their self-awareness, develop tools for transforming oppression and suffering, cultivate compassion, and develop the capacity to initiate change responsibly.

See our tools for the Consciousness Practitioner including sample workshops and personal transformation practices.

Social Transformation

We help participants identify priority social issues and their core causes, then facilitate creative problem-solving. In teams, the women enter an intensive venture design process. They construct mission and vision statements, an operational plan, organizational design, budget, creative resourcing strategies, evaluation metrics, strategic partnerships, a code of conduct, and a communications strategy - all the skills needed to create a viable social enterprise.

Mind-Body Trauma Healing

Within our Academy for Conscious Change is a breath-based, mind-body approach for trauma healing that we have used with earthquake survivors in Haiti, genocide and violence survivors in Rwanda, and post-conflict survivors in northern Uganda. The program, called Breath~Body~Mind (BBM), involves a form of yogic breathwork called Coherent Breathing (coined by Stephen Elliot), studied and refined by Dr. Richard Brown, Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University, and Dr. Patricia Gerbarg, Professor of Psychiatry at New York Medical College, and integrates Qigong movements (as taught by Master Robert Peng) and guided meditation to help restore balance to the nervous system. By combining modern scientific knowledge with holistic healing methods from many cultures, BBM rapidly relieves stress, anxiety, sleep problems, and other symptoms of post-traumatic stress. These techniques have been used with Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina survivors, 9/11 first responders, combat veterans, and rape victims in Sudan.

Learn more about our unique approach to mind-body trauma healing.