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Our Co-CEO tells the story of Rhizome’s journey through our first four years
Power is the capacity to affect purpose, whether on an individual, interpersonal, or institutional level. We constantly interact with entities and people who exert power over us, impacting our job descriptions, academic environments, and relationships. We can similarly exert our own power to shift purpose in these contexts.
In a slightly different though related vein, power is the ability to imagine and enact an alternative reality. There is immense power in our capacity to observe current, seemingly insurmountable obstacles, think beyond them, and work towards a world where they are not inevitable. Harnessing this power is key to our work as organizers.
Sally Marao, Youth Organizer
Since first coming together in August 2021, we’ve done a lot. Read below to learn more about the decisions we’re voting on, culture we’re creating, and how our student-led process unfolded. You can read about our origins in this article from Pomona College Magazine.
90 Co-Founders vote on the name Rhizome and incorporate a nonprofit. We finalize our mission: to activate young people’s identities into action & help youth treat civic service as the work of a lifetime.
The name Rhizome is decided by just one vote - democracy at its finest!
We select our Board of Directors and start organizing. We build an outline of the Civic Service Fellowship, design our system, and start to pilot our early programming.
One of the earliest decisions we voted on was to focus on Title 1 and under-resourced high schools as we grow. Fellows make visits to elementary schools, teaching democracy.
Teams of Civic Service Fellows build voter education drives to share paths to young people running for office, motivate others to engage in local elections, and help peers register & pre-register themselves to vote.
We clarify our power sharing system that resembles three branches of government, with Youth Organizers as the legislative, FF staff as the executive, and Board Members as the judiciary.
By August, a year after launch, we start to pay Organizers before anyone else. Upon learning they will actually be paid for their work, Organizers demand to know when Rhizome will purchase our first yacht.
Ramp up recruitment for the Civic Service Fellowship, expanding from 3 Chapters to 13 Chapters across the US. Fellows conduct surveys to understand what others in their high school care about.
Fellows continue leading local Community Empowerment Events around the inclusive, nonviolent, and nonpartisan ideas they are most passionate about. Fellows also finish teaching democracy to K-5 students.
Fellows build voter education drives and help peers register themselves to vote. We raise funds to pay our full time staff person and begin hiring a 2nd person.
We pause for a 6 week mental health break and engage in collective design processes to further streamline our model and make a greater impact in School Year 2023-2024.
With just two full-time staff, we slow down to focus on setting our culture and building the infrastructure needed to support sustainable long-term efforts.
We meet for the first time ever at our in-person retreat for all Organizers! With over 80 people in attendance, we build culture, co-design our Student Bill of Rights, and make plans for the rest of 2024.
We build from 2 to 4 paid Full-Time Staff Members, deepening our focus on training.
We finalize our DNA, with an explicit focus on our core purpose: to build collective power for young people to create the safer, happier, healthier world they want to live in.
We build a Student Voice Campaign, engaging young people from hundreds of high schools to build a base for democracy and engage local media.
Using a democratic decision-making process, Organizers vote 82% in favor of Rhizome moving to a Co-CEO model. Read more about the process here.
Rhizome shifts Organizers from contractors to employees to build long-term leadership pipelines, doubles Organizers hours, deepens our focus on leadership development, and hires a Co-CEO to advance our long-term impact.
