Racial Healing Initiative Announces New Leadership
Launched in 2021, the Racial Healing Initiative (RHI) has completed its first year of working hand-in-hand with retreat centers to support racial healing among each center’s staff, leadership, and community members. Developed as a partnership between the Center for Healing and Liberation and the Retreat Center Collaboration, the RHI has facilitated listening sessions, capacity-building, onsite retreats, and follow-up programming at six retreat centers in the piloting phase (2022). Building on what we’ve learned thus far, we are partnering with several more centers in 2023. Our vision is a field of retreat centers with a shared commitment to racial healing in their communities – fostering racial justice, disrupting white supremacy, and healing together in deep, resilient, and equitable relationships.
To support this work, we are pleased to announce that the Center for Healing and Liberation has expanded its capacity by hiring Brenda Salgado as the new program director for the RHI. Brenda brings a visionary perspective to the role, building on her career experience that has connected retreat centers, social justice, movement building, nonprofit management, and philanthropy. Brenda’s deep commitment to healing, justice, and mutuality will ensure the continuity of RHI’s mission, and guide the initiative as it matures. Going forward, Victoria Santos will support Brenda and the team as an advisor.
The RHI team looks forward to serving more retreat centers in 2023-2024. Please contact Ben Scott-Brandt if your center is interested in participating.
Letter from the Racial Healing Initiative Program Director
Brenda Salgado
Dear RHI Community,
Warm greetings! I am honored to join the Racial Healing initiative (RHI), and want to express my gratitude for Victoria Santos. Her vision, dedication and partnership with the RHI team have built the foundations for where we are now. I am grateful she will be continuing in an advisory role.
Since my childhood, I have had a deep connection to spirituality and the natural world. My family, my teachers and my ancestors have instilled values that have rooted me and informed my work in nonprofit management, organizational consulting, spiritual teaching, organizing and movement building, racial and ancestral healing, and equity and social justice.
I have been fortunate to visit many retreat centers with my work, where I have met many wonderful individuals engaged in the challenging and rewarding work of holding sacred space. I see the Retreat Center Collaboration as a flourishing expression of this community, clearly evident in the work of the RHI.
Why am I called to RHI at this time? In part, because spiritual elders have shared how important racial healing is for our human family, so we can remember our belonging, purpose and dignity, and mend the hoop of humanity together. It is also central to healing our relationship with land and place. Indeed, indigenous prophecy and cosmology have helped me to understand why this work of racial, ancestral and land healing is so urgent in these times.
In that context, I see the work of RHI as sacred. It requires deep listening, brave space, authenticity, and the discomfort and stretching that growth often carries. It also requires facing some of the imprints of the past on our current beliefs, actions, structures and institutions. This is our collective work and responsibility, and the work of this time.
Deepening our commitment to racial healing and serving more retreat centers in this capacity has profound implications, for us, for our ancestors and for the next seven generations. I am joyful to join you in this, and look forward to RHI’s team serving more retreat centers and building our beloved community.
Thank you for your continued partnership and support with RHI. I look forward to working with you!
In peace and gratitude,
Brenda Salgado
