Join us as GROW - the Grounded and Resilient Organizers Workshop - becomes a fellowship! Learn more about becoming a GROW Fellow to help our movements respond.

Applications are currently closed. We will post the newest applications for 2024's GROW cohort as they become available.

What is GROW?

We are in hard, hard times. The fires of justice are burning all around us. We feel the rage, grief, and possibilities as this year has thrown us all in a loop. Our movements are having to respond to so many attacks at the same time. Now is the time to root down and skill up.
The Grounded and Resilient Organizers’ Workshop (GROW) builds skills, deepens leadership, and uplifts the spirits of young adult activists (ages 18-34). Building upon GROW Climate Justice (2015) GROW Racial Justice (2016), three years of virtual GROW cohorts during the pandemic, and more, we offer opportunities to strengthen spiritually grounded organizing on these and other justice issues.

What is GROW Fellowship?

Building upon our previous GROW/Thrive/Shift programs, it will equip UU (and UU adjacent!) young adults of color and white young adults with the skills, spiritual grounding, and community to engage in justice work within and beyond our Unitarian Universalist faith. Over the 5 months, we will be touching on themes of Care & Governance, Conflict, Land & Resources, and Time & Imagination.

How will GROW Fellowship work?

Due to the impacts of the ongoing pandemic, we will gather for group touch points online with invitations to frequently take our praxis offline, as well. A modest stipend will be available for those who are able to commit to consistent participation during the duration of the Fellowship. More details will be available as we review your applications.
Here are some of the touch points we are imagining for our time together:

Covenant and weekly check-ins are important for a few reasons: these will be a place to name and practice our values of justice and equity, and create time together to make sure everyone is experiencing the space as healing and generative. This will help keep our group on purpose.
Justice workouts will be quick 30-45 minute online gatherings each week for reflection, practice and solidarity actions. Sometimes, these will arise out of asks from movement partners. Other times, they include individually-tailored assignment to flex our justice muscles in deliberate and concrete ways.
Occasional caucus spaces will offer the opportunity to gather based on our various interlayered identities and to support one another in the work that is ours to do rooted in the lived experiences that have shaped our lives.
GROW Fellows will receive care packages, tangible and digital, that will include offerings for learning, nourishment, reflection and action.

Partners for GROW Fellowship

The UUA Office of Lifespan Faith Engagement is grateful to collaborate with UU Young Adults for Climate Justice, UU Women's Federation, and UU College of Social Justice, to create and facilitate the GROW Fellowship.

GROW In-Person Retreat

Since 2022, in addition to the online GROW cohort, we have been offering an in-person GROW retreat for young adult organizers to focus in on community building, and to learn about movement history and current organizing ongoing in the city we retreat in (Portland in 2022, Pittsburgh in 2023). And of course, to workshop and strategize around our own ongoing organizing.