What does it mean to be a Childhood Changemaker™?
Childhood Changemaking illuminates that the qualities of childhood; play, creativity, curiosity, risk-taking, resilience, and collaboration are also the qualities of transformative changemakers.
Childhood Changemaking means bringing a fresh playful liberating approach to changemaking and empowerment that is inspired by childhood with (1) a playful spirit of integrity, (2) a deep commitment to the path of changemaking as REALationships, and (3) and an imaginative approach to change.
Playful Integrity
Balancing the playful and the serious while linking inner and outer change.
- Befriending ourselves with love, humor, and self-compassion to center mental health and self-love throughout the journey.
- Confronting the “Changemaker Paradox” with a critical and playful reflection on the link between our public and private changemaking
- Reflecting on how our relationships with children and childhood mirror the social issues of the world
- Taking naps when needed and doing the dishes as needed
REALationships
Changemaking as Relationship
- Seeing relationships (everyday moments, conversations, embodiment) as the fulcrum of change
- Mindset of all as one family where there is no “other”
- Commitment to refining the truths we tell each other and to ourselves
- Appreciation for our interconnected and interdependent nature
- Strategic relational shift framing social issues connecting the economic to the ecological
Imagination
Reimagining what’s possible
- Re-connecting with our boundless capacity in childhood to imagine, vision, and dream
- Harnessing the power of the mind and the heart in imagining a world transformed by the possibilities of love
- Re-inspiring our imagination in our everyday moments
- Unleashing our creative potential and ways of expression, healing, and connection
- Illuminating our power of making our wildest changemaker dreams come to fruition
The Childhood Changemaker path illuminates the following ‘playground’ principles:
Slide | See Saw | Sand Box | Merry-Go-Round | Swing Set
Principle #1 | SLIDE
Begin at the Beginning – Empowerment Inspired by Childhood
Seeing The Roots of Liberation Clearly
Disempowerment is a common human experience from universal experiences of powerlessness in childhood from our societies ‘power over’ dynamics of control over children called adultism. The path to empowerment begins back at the beginning – reclaiming our power from childhood which transforms these experiences and others we have in life into our superpowers so we can connect and lead from our wholeness. It is known that the nature of oppression is non-hierarchical and intersectional but oppression is also foundational, in childhood. Since the oppression of children is the earliest, most normalized, and rationalized form of oppression; it provides the foundation for all other forms of oppression because the first relationships in childhood root initial experiences with the common elements of all oppression. Our greatest social issues – climate crisis, racism, sexism – all have their roots in the way adults treat children and how adults treat their own inner child. Transforming systems of oppression and not just treating symptoms of oppression requires a transformation of childhood and adulthood.
Principle #2 | See Saw
Teach Who You Are
Seeing Ourselves Clearly
We begin the process with a deepening of awareness that refines the truths we tell ourselves and how we relate to our own childhood experiences now as adults. This involves searching for and re-connecting to our authentic self and deep personal “why” in commitment to the journey of changemaking. We strive for integrity and reintegration to authenticity and vitality for reconnecting with ourselves and our “inner child.” Playful integrity is the balancing of the serious and the playful in the changemaking journey while linking inner and outer change. It involves taking accountability for our lives and changemaker journey without striving for perfection with a playful spirit and being kind and compassionate to ourselves along the way centering mental health and self-love.
Principle #3 | Sand Box
I am Me because of We and We needs Me
Seeing our Interdependent Nature Clearly
The earliest experience of being in the womb is a lived experience of the profound interconnection and interdependence of human nature. This is important to remember in pursuits of solidarity and partnership in changemaking. It is our true nature. It is our original sense of inter-being that acknowledges that all of our liberation is bound together.
It also acknowledges that ‘it takes a village’ to unconditionally love a child up – a loving village of childhood changemakers.
Principle #4 | Merry-Go-Round
Connecting Moments to Movements and Movements to Moments
Seeing Changemaking Clearly
Seeing changemaking clearly involves seeing love as both the goal and the process and “seeing the goal in the process.” Childhood Changemakers™ see changemaking not as it is traditionally defined as a social entrepreneur but changemaking as a lifestyle by connecting our everyday moments to movements, seeing change as relational and interconnected between the public and the private, the inner and the outer, and the personal and the planetary and beyond reconnecting to the boundlessness of the imagination.
Principle #5 – Swing Set
Liberate Your Imagination
Seeing What’s Possible Clearly
Linking childhood and changemaking involves being inspired to be playful with our imagination towards changemaking to reimagine what is possible. It also means that the changemaking journey can be joyful, fun, presencing, and renewing. It involves taking the risk to dream BIG and letting our imagination go wild to expand the possibilities of what is possible. When we liberate our imagination we can integrate the qualities of childhood – play, creativity, curiosity, risk-taking, resilience, and collaboration – into our changemaking.