Create a Program with Us: Metta Mentors, 2010!

** UPDATE: The Metta Mentors 2010 application is available now! Click here to know more… **

Dear Metta Community,

May this find you grounded in peace and gratitude as we prepare together for the transition to a new decade, one full of promise and potentiality for the continued movement toward an ever-more-nonviolent future!

We are writing today to update you on the status of our Metta Mentors Nonviolence Mentorship program for the year 2010, and to ask for your support and advice.

Metta Mentors: the 2009 Mentees!

As you may know, the Mentors program is one of Metta’s most successful and concrete projects. The feedback from our former mentees and partners affirms that participation in the program can be a life-changing experience. As one of our 2009 mentees wrote,

“I wanted to formally thank you for what was easily one of the most transformative summers of my life. …I have realized how much room there is for change within myself. I have learned to approach problems differently than I used to, and I am getting better at recognizing the needs and fears of others and responding accordingly.”

Metta Mentors is changing lives. Nevertheless, after three incredible summers, we find our program for the first time without funding for the coming year, as our previous funder has discontinued its grantmaking activities. Thus, we are now searching for creative ways to put this unique program together for summer 2010. Fortunately, what we lack in conventional currency, we have in abundance in the forms of social capital, creativity, and passionate belief in the transformative power of nonviolence education!

And as we have told a number of people recently (including a few potential participants who have already requested applications for the 2010 program), we are dedicated to putting on the program this summer, with whatever resources we have, in whatever size and shape we are able to make it, and to make it even more thoughtful and transformative than it has ever been.

Fortunately, we already know that our program expenses will be lower this year, as we have made some changes that will allow us to be more efficient with our resources. (Please see the P.S. for more information about these new developments.) But we know that you — our amazing, supportive community and network — can help us to find even more creative solutions to fill our needs, and so we are asking for your help! Below are three ways you can be of great help to us as we plan for a successful 2010 program:

1. Fund a Mentee

If you are interested in contributing funds to support a future leader of the nonviolent paradigm (aka “mentee”), or if you know of other potential funding sources, please let us know.

The numbers are simple: with $2000, we can provide a mentee with a living stipend for the ten weeks of the program. With $1000 (maybe less), we can provide a travel grant for an international student. The international component of the program is a unique and important one, and we would like to continue to invite international students to our program, if possible.

Note that these are the only donations we are soliciting for the program — support that will go directly to the mentees to cover their expenses. This is a transparent donor-to-recipient project, so please consider supporting an idealistic, young future peacemaker with even the smallest amount if you are able!

You can easily donate any amount via the Metta Center account at Network for Good. Be sure and tell us that your donation is specifically to support Metta Mentors, so we can allocate it correctly.

2. Provide room and/or board for a mentee.

Our mentees are thoughtful, considerate, smart, and dynamic young individuals from the US and abroad. Any offers of room and/or board would radically decrease their cost of living, and thus, our stipend costs. Please let us know if you are interested in hosting a mentee, or know someone who would be. We would be happy to provide references of people who have hosted mentees in the past.

3. Tell us about any other ideas you have for supporting the program.

There is so much inspiring, rippling, community-nurturing work being done today that there must be ways for us to run this program outside the box of conventional funder-grantee relationships. We believe in the currency of shared values and shared passion for nonviolence, and want to explore it! If you know of any ways we might receive travel support through other agencies, or thoughtful ways to experiment with social media, gift economy, or other means of social- or pay-it-forward technology, please let us know.

We recognize that we are living in an interdependent world, and that success for every one of us is rooted in our compassion and willingness to work together toward a common goal. Please help us to see what we may be missing so that we can continue to give this gift to our mentees, to the community organizations that they serve, and to the world!

In writing this letter we assume that you are familiar with the Metta Mentors program and all that it offers. If you would like to know more about the program, please visit the program pages on this site, and feel free to contact us with additional questions or comments at info@mettacenter.org.

With great challenges come great opportunities. This time of transformation can be an opportunity for us at Metta to be even more thoughtful and transparent about our needs, to find unexpected solutions, and and to put together a program that more effectively reflects who we are as an organization — a group passionate about living nonviolence in every moment, experimenting with Truth, and serving the world creatively as dedicated satyagrahis!

Thank you so much for your support and solidarity. May we all vow to live nonviolently in the present as we work together to create a nonviolent future.

In gratitude,
Shannon Wills, on behalf of the Metta Team

P.S. A note on past and future program planning:

Metta Center ran the Metta Mentors program last year at a cost of $32,000, which included living-expense stipends ($2000/ea) for twelve mentees and two co-facilitators, travel grants for our four international mentees, rental of program and event space, and minimal expenses for transportation, food, printing, etc. This year we have already secured $4000 for the program — enough to fund two mentees –and are waiting to hear back from several family foundations to whom we have applied for supplemental funding.

This year our program expenses will be lower, as we will host the weekly mentee gatherings in our new office space on Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Berkeley. Whereas we were required to rent space last year to house the gatherings, we can now offer the program in-house, which will also contribute to a tighter-knit community between the mentees and the Metta team (though we were already quite tight-knit last year 🙂

In order to further lower expenses, we are ready to take some obvious cost-saving steps, such as lowering the number of mentees we can accept, reducing or eliminating travel grants (not a favorite option!), accepting more local students with fewer financial needs (also not favored as it discriminates against those with fewer financial resources), and utilizing volunteer hours however possible. We are also considering facilitating the program completely in-house, thus eliminating the need for facilitator stipends.

Some of these changes may actually increase the effectiveness of Metta Mentors in 2010, increasing the community quotient, the gratitude quotient, and the creativity quotient that are all the driving forces of the program in the first place! In our fourth year of the program, Metta Mentors is well-established and positioned to be even more efficient with the resources we have — and do so without detracting from our other projects (click here for a description).

A final note on our dedication to the continued life of the program:

One thing we hope to do this year is record elements of the program, and create an online course version of Metta Mentors that can be shared with the world community the way we have done with Michael Nagler’s nonviolence courses.

The in-house program is already reaching people around the world as a result of the ripples spread by our nearly 30 previous mentees, and we hope it will continue to do so for many years to come. But to preserve and share the model so that the ripples can be consciously replicated by others who wish to undertake it, we wish to give the gift of an online program that will live beyond our walls and beyond our needs for local funding. Whatever happens to the Berkeley-based Metta Mentors program, we will preserve the theory, the documentation, and the model for generations of change-makers to come!