OCF Blog

OCF Staff member, Fardous Ahmed has moved on this month from her work at One Circle Foundation to take on a new career in the US Government at the Dept. of Agriculture. Fardous wrote reflections on her time in the OCF training rooms and the grace that was found there in community and connection

Brothers as Allies, a curriculum from The Council for Boys and Young Men, is a program that changed my life forever. Four years ago I was struggling to find my identity. Hungry for a chance to have real interactions with youth. To truly be in the field and help. Help every student I encounter get at least .01% closer to their dreams. Some may see a small percentage, but the trajectory that shifts from the curricula provided by One Circle Foundation literally saves lives. It saved mine.

... Through my work, I am lucky and blessed to help enrich and empower girls and young women to pursue their intellectual pursuits with confidence, curiosity, and agency. This is my purpose! This is what I was born to do. Just today at our Circle of Peace, which is a daily community gathering amongst students and staff, I recited the Horizons pledge to remind our scholars that we are all sisters in this:  I promise to lift other girls up, have their backs, and make it safe for them to be exactly who they are. Every time I look in the mirror, I’ll remind myself that I am not alone, that I am beautiful, that my voice matters, and that I am enough. To anyone and everyone, including all of the young women that I have served and will serve, THANK YOU for making a difference in my life! Though that imposter syndrome creeps up every now and then, you all are the remedy that treats me every time! I am enough and so are you!  Next week, we will celebrate all things GIRL and everything that we have accomplished, persevered through, and fought for. It is a day where we uplift girls and women all around us, all over the world, those who are silenced and those who have amplified, past and present, here and now. What a day to celebrate women and girls! I challenge you to make a promise and commitment to continue to make an impact in a girl’s life. 

Let me ask this: what happens when children don’t have “Real Models” to look up to? What happens when the very people that brought children into this world don’t exemplify healthy love? What happens when children don’t have a village? What if I said, “When the community children stop crying, the community is dying.”  I invite you to stop reading for a moment and think about that. I was reared in a time where as soon as the street light came on I had to be back at the house. A time where if I was doing something I had no business it was OK for someone from the village to say, “All right now, you know better. Do I need to call your grandparents?” A time where grandma always had a home-cooked meal. I was reared to be respectful, yes mam/ no mam, or yes sir/no sir

The pandemic took anything that was challenging already in schools and poured gasoline on it.  Rather than punish kids or try to cure the problem, our job is to help them get through it.  The number one thing a kid needs while dealing with trauma or toxic stress is a loving, caring, reliable adult, per Harrison Bailey III, principal of Liberty High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  Too many kids, which, consequently, are our future workforce, have been castaway, kicked out of their home, or virtually disregarded due to lack of parent involvement, lack of a healthy

All of us - of all genders, ages, and cultures - have a role to play in solving this crisis. Underneath the abject horrors of school shootings, below the grasp of automatic rifles and magazine cartridges, exists a teenager, angry, overwhelmed, who’s endured childhood abuse, domestic violence, and severe bullying at school. According to data trackers, the adolescent is, on average, 16 years old.New York Times columnist David Brooks notes this teen is in crisis, isolated, bitter, at a breaking point, and craving revenge, power, and notoriety. And, he is male.  98% of mass shooters are male, as reported in The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic, 2021, by researchers Jillian Peterson and James Densley. We know this. But do we ask, “Why?”  As gender violence prevention educator and activist, Jackson Katz, asks, why does the media avoid saying so, most often using gender-neutral terms like shooter, perpetrator, or intruder for an action that is patently not gender-neutral? While access to assault weapons must urgently be addressed, it’s also imperative that we dig deeper to uproot a rotted source of male violence deeply embedded in our social

The best way to ensure youth feel comfortable to share and grow in their circle is to have a safe, stable, and predictable circle structure that occurs each session. This provides girls/boys with a reliable framework that they can trust and count on to happen each time. A crucial part of creating this safe, stable circle structure is the talking piece. The talking piece may be a talking stick, an object from nature such as a beautiful shell or large rock, or another item of value and meaning to the group.  The talking piece is a physical item that is used whenever the practice of attentive listening is particularly important. During check-in and at certain times during the circle session one person shares about the topic at hand by holding the talking piece and speaking from their heart, while all others listen attentively and without interruption. To begin using the talking piece

A New Grant Writer’s Template is now available for Unity Circle® and we've updated the Grant Writer’s Template for Girls Circle® and The Council for Boys and Young Men®. The templates are available for free and provide your setting with comprehensive, sector-specific language to craft an effective grant proposal to fund One Circle Foundation professional training, curricula, and implementation that fits your unique needs. Copy and paste the written content right out of any One Circle Foundation Grant Writer’s Template directly into your grant proposal.

Summer can be a challenging time for youth and families. Youth may be prevented from engaging in meaningful activities due to a lack of resources, availability, financial access, or a host of other challenges.  During the One Circle Foundation facilitator support meeting in July, some of our partners shared creative ways that they continue to engage youth during the summer months. The ideas were too good not to share. With the permission of both of our partners, we are pleased to make available the following ideas for engaging youth in meaningful activities.

June is National Pride Month, a time to reflect on the actions and courageous efforts of countless LGBT+ individuals in our history who fought for the rights of entire communities that faced unjust violence, discrimination, or were flat-out ignored by larger society. Every Wednesday throughout June we provided a social media highlight on an amazing LGBT+ individual whose community work changed the course of American, and LGBT+, history. Read all 5 features on Harvey Milk, Gilbert Baker, Marsha P. Johnson, Bayard Rustin, and Stormé DeLarverie in this compilation-style blog post.