What We Do
Education
EMA and our partners offer a powerful antidote to both apathy and the algorithm. Our goal is to make school meaningful again by centering the learning needs, experiences, and agency of young people and by empowering teachers to design and integrate purpose-driven storytelling into their existing curricula with the support of their peers in the EMA Community of Learners.
Community of Learners
The Community of Learners (CoL) reframes what “school” is and can be. The coordination hub for our Education programming, the CoL is a cohort of teachers sharing curriculum, building community, and developing new resources that center student agency and purpose—resources created for teachers, by teachers.
As the ones tasked with helping young people discover who they are and how they want to be in the world—and to help them build the skills and habits they need to become active citizens in a democracy—teachers are among society’s most important professionals and should be treated accordingly. That means recognizing the value of their time and expertise and compensating them for it.
We create stipended professional development workshops for teachers that center youth leadership in the classroom. We equip teachers with the tools, support, and lasting community they need to help students explore their values, tell their stories, and engage meaningfully with the world around them. The result is classrooms where teachers feel reenergized and students feel seen, motivated, and connected to their learning.
Purpose Storytelling Collaborative
From our decades of experience working with and within the nonprofit sector, we deeply understand both the power and the necessity of collective action, and the critical need to shift the nonprofit dynamic from one of competition to one rooted in collaboration. We know that, together, our impact is exponentially greater than the sum of our parts.
Based on that core philosophy, we built the Purpose Storytelling Collaborative, a coalition of partners working with EMA at the intersection of purpose learning and visual storytelling. Their educational programming produces the storytelling resources and instructional pathways that our Community of Learners brings to teachers for implementation in the classroom.
Partners in the Collaborative
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Youth Leadership
We ensure that young people are not only represented in our work, but are employed as leaders within it, while earning a true living wage. EMA provides students and young adults with paid opportunities to grow professionally while helping shape and sustain our programs and support a network of nonprofit partners.
Capacity Support for Partners
Our young leaders provide critical capacity-building support within EMA and across our network. EMA’s part-time Network Manager positions are designed to complement student schedules and learning while providing project-based opportunities to work directly with organizations making tangible social impact. Their role is not to simply assist but to co-create, co-design, and actively co-lead partner relationships and projects. Their work helps our partners fill the gaps in their organizations’ small-team capacities and assist with key projects that reinforce their development and sustainability.
While we have evolved from our original role as a funder, we remain committed to the relationships we built with our long-term partners by continuing to provide this important means of capacity support (“beyond the check”) to these organizations making tremendous impact in their communities:
For our young leaders, our hope is for their work with us to be a meaningful part of their professional journey, as they carry their experiences—and their ever-increasing skill sets—further into the world to build the just and equitable future they envision.
Resourcing the Rhizome
EMA’s youth leaders are also the key designers and drivers of our monthly Resourcing the Rhizome (RtR) virtual gatherings, where individuals and nonprofits both within and new to our network share ideas, access tools and resources, and deepen relationships. As the RtR network has steadily expanded, it has brought new opportunities for learning, collaboration, and abundance in a nonprofit landscape defined by scarcity. Each month we find opportunities to share resources, a sense of belonging among people facing similar challenges, and connections that restore joy. As RtR has steadily grown, we ensure it adapts and responds to the network according to its needs and goals and continues to be a safe and welcoming space for all.
Come join us as we continue to grow the rhizome!
Fill out the new participant form at the link below.
Storytelling
Stories are experiences that exist beyond words on a page. Through stories, we create understanding, bridge differences, cultivate empathy, and broaden perspectives. At EMA, we embrace the universal nature of stories and storytelling by embedding it within every area of our work. We share stories to amplify narratives from the field, to take a deeper dive into the processes behind our work, and to highlight the meaningful connections that are borne out of our network.
Rhizōma is EMA’s online platform for storytelling and learning. Through blog posts, interviews, artwork, films, events, and curricular resources, rhizōma provides a space for people to engage with stories that cultivate empathy and inspire collective action.