The Jackson Grown Blog provides insight into the Monthly Meetings attended by the Fellows, local mentors and special guests. It offers summaries and thoughts on the topics covered. Importantly though, it provides a space for the people that make Jackson grow. It gives them a place to share their views and visions for the community that we all call home. Take a look, have a think and, most importantly listen to the voices of the people that are “Jackson Grown”.
Instead of anger or jaded complaints about a challenge they might encounter, the Fellows are encouraged to ask “why”. And then, ask why again and again and again. With these deeper questions, perhaps comes deeper understanding. And, maybe, with this understanding we may see more resilient solutions.
Read MoreThinking more deeply about big things or more broadly about small things very often requires interaction with good, diverse and patient people who are willing to listen, able to push and motivated to sacrifice towards contributing to a bigger vision of what world should look like.
Read MorePerhaps it is here, we see what separates people from having a passive interest in something to being an active, inspired participant in that space, whatever that participation looks like. Determination is not easy. It is messy. It hurts. It is not comfortable.
Read MorePerhaps this is one of the most fascinating things about the concept of launching imagination. Ultimately, it is a story…a dramatic story. It is a story of imperfect people imagining a big idea who, often together with other imperfect people, take a huge risk in trying something new.
Read MoreAiming to serve high school Juniors and Seniors with a broad range of skills, interests and aspirations, the Jackson Grown Leader Fellowship was awarded $5,000 by the Leaders Education Foundation on Friday September 8th at its Annual Kickoff Meeting.
Read MoreThe 2nd Annual Challenge to the City demonstrated a unique and rare sharing of firsthand experience, deep knowledge, refined skills and valuable networks at all levels of the Jackson leadership community. These components were bound by the assumption that each person could learn something from the other. It was an enviable combination of experience, knowledge, skills, networks and humility.
Read MoreWe need more involvement from the community because projects like this are what our teens need. You hear a lot of people say “it takes a village to raise a kid” but we don’t see much action being taken. Action begins with us as individuals. Importantly, there are those who want to give back. Opportunities may exist but youth like me often cannot find the right outlets.
Read MoreThinking about this at a macro level may show the scope of the problem, but considering it by individual case emphasizes its severity. Victims of abuse endure intense difficulty and are left to live with its considerable consequences. Life becomes a journey of overcoming your past and healing from something unjustly received, constantly aware of the odds stacked against you to thrive.
Read MoreFor the first time, many of the Fellows were encouraged to think about communication as an act of placing an audience in a story. It encouraged making the audience feel what they had not felt, inspiring the audience to think what they had not thought and consider what they had not considered. Fellows began to reflect on communication as an act of being heard as opposed to an act of telling.
Read MoreThe Jackson Grown Leader Fellowship has taken a bold step to develop high quality co-leadership at all levels of the community. It has asked high school students to learn, listen and lead. It has asked the community to learn, listen and lead with them. It has asked both to help and hear one another.
Read MoreAt its core, practice is an exercise in humility. The act of refining or improving a skill, whether in sports or speaking, clarinet or coding, weight lifting or writing, is an acknowledgement that growth is possible and that improvements can be made. For individuals who feel they have “arrived” or who have worked hard to achieve some measurement of success, this can be a barrier to continue learning and growing. In these cases, arrival could imply stagnation.
Read MoreIn seeking to understand challenges, we see they are hard not necessarily because of the large amount of information we are required to gather and organize. Anyone can google that. Challenges are hard to understand because once we analyze the information, we often confront the reality that the initial challenge we started with is complex.
Read MoreAdmit it. You might be scared. You might phrase it differently to hide the fear in front of your friends, partner or co-workers. But there is fear…somewhere. You might say “worried”, “uncertain”, “hesitant”, “nervous”, “concerned” or “stressed”. We are often more scared of being scared than the thing we were originally afraid of…
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