OUR APPLICATION PERIOD IS CLOSED
email residencies@windcall.org to get on our mailing list for updates
The next cycle will open in February/March of 2025
The Windcall Institute has awarded Residencies for over three decades, offering lifetime changing experiences to over 700 community and labor organizers from around the country and all sectors of the social justice movement.
The Windcall Residency is a nine-month experience that provides you with a highly supportive environment in three phases, including one or three week residential retreats that removes most of the outside pressures and internal constraints that inhibit organizers’ renewal, and allows space for exploring the practices that can lead to long-term sustainability in the movement.
Windcall’s Flagship Residency Program
- To decompress from over-scheduled lives, Windcall is offering:
- one-week “Mindful Breathers” for organizers with caretaking responsibilities.
- 3-week “Cohorts” of 3-4 organizers in a beautiful environment, featuring chef-prepared meals and a shared rental car.
- The Windcall experience is supported with a Covid safety guide and protocols, residency guide, and a stipend.
- Reflective debriefs, a virtual cohort webinar, six coaching sessions and a two-week ‘at home practice guide’ for residents to integrate and deepen the residency experience into daily lives.
Setting the course for your 9 month residency experience
Windcall will help you prepare for the residency with two virtual orientations to learn about your hosts and Windcall location and help to set intentions for this time. You will have an opportunity to choose a Windcall coach who will support you in maximizing your residency experience and implementing any insights and aspirations generated during your residency.
We know it can be challenging to leave work and community and step into time focused on yourself. Windcall fosters mutual support among peer residents and with our active and engaged alumni network as one of our core elements. We offer ideas to raise money for your travel, if needed. Windcall and its coaches are here to support you.
Self-Guided Learning of Windcall’s Transformative Practices
During your residency, you’ll have the freedom to make the time your own with space to rest, reflect, think, and envision new possibilities. Each Windcall location offers unique natural environments and opportunities to explore transformative practices that build long term resiliency and wellness through a mix of the Windcall elements that organizers before you have found renewing and transformative.
Earth: Grounding in Nature
Air: Cultivating Spaciousness – including solitude and silence and technology fasting
Fire: Creative expression and play
Water: Care for body, mind and spirit
We also provide opportunities for peer support and coaching
Windcall’s three decades of providing profound experiences for organizers, plus research from the science, psychology, spirituality, and leadership development fields, demonstrate why the holistic combination of these practices work. You’ll choose what specifically works for you. The core experience – the cultivation of spaciousness by taking a breath of fresh air – is that your time is your own.
Bringing your Residency Home
Much rested, you’ll likely come home with a fresh perspective for your life, organization and/or movement. Windcall will support your integration and continued learning through two debriefs with staff, a virtual webinar with your peer group, and six sessions with a Windcall coach. Scientific research has shown that it takes 21 days to stop old habits and develop new healthier ones. Windcall has developed a two-week, written and video guide with more practices for you to follow at home at your own pace to round out the 21-day residency experience.
Windcall will support you to integrate your experience with your organization and colleagues. These may include implementing new ways to lead, changing organizational culture and practices, launching collaborative projects from a more grounded and visionary place, and navigating organizational and leadership changes.
Windcall is a gift from the movement to the movement. We welcome you to join the Windcall family and build a network of mutual peer support to extend this healing and transformative experience to more organizers across the country.
“I loved having the combination of quiet time, space, and intelligent and warm companionship.” — Madeline Janis, Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, Los Angeles, CA
