Collaboration with Commonweal in Bolinas, California, is part of the Sector Initiative for Retreat Centers: Creating Sacred Space for Transformation. The three-year initiative includes Commonweal, Kirkridge, Transformations Spirituality Center, Garrison Institute, GilChrist and others in developing a national or global network of retreat centers that are committed to connecting inner work with outer action and to working together on strategies for financial sustainability.

The After Charlottesville is a bipartisan project that aims to explore solutions for addressing the growing toxicity and division in America. As part of the project, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Charles Koch Institute (CKI), and NBC Universal’s “Erase the Hate” program in collaboration with the Fetzer Institute will invite key national leaders to identify issues that lead to separation and division in America and offer solutions for healing the heart of American democracy.

Sponsorship of the 2018 International Symposium for Contemplative Research November 8-11, 2018.

Sponsorship of the Sojourners June 13-15, 2018, Summit, a unique cross-sector gathering of leaders committed to world change through faith and justice. Thought leaders and movement makers from a variety of faith traditions and fields will meet to discuss, strategize, and create opportunities to act on some of the most pressing issues in our nation and world. The Summit convenes an intimate gathering of 300 leaders committed to finding solutions through collaboration.

Working with Millennium.org, through a three-year closely collaborative and co-creative process, to create a large scale teacher training program/platform, which will provide a system for ongoing professional development, addressing teacher stress and wellbeing in the process, and ultimately fostering an environment for spiritual, whole-student development.

As part of the second building block shared scared story (i.e. Critique and Vision) and led by the co-founder of Perspectiva, Dr. Jonathan Rowson, this portfolio of projects focuses on narratives, systems, and individual spiritual transformation in an intellectually skeptical European context. The collaboration will represent an intellectual and practical attempt to explore the sacred shared story from a different perspective consisting of research, dissemination, and retreat experiences based on the German concept of Bildung (a process of personal and cultural maturation).

The collaboration seeks to implement the Institute’s program strategies in our own local geography by offering opportunities for spiritual practice, learning, and spiritual growth to members of the greater Kalamazoo community at Transformations Spirituality Center. The two-year project will host at least 10 different spiritual teachers from various religious and spiritual traditions, with presentations at Fetzer Community of Freedom Gatherings as well as events for the general public in Kalamazoo.

Support over three years to collaborate with the Better Angels organization. The purpose of this collaboration is to: expand the reach of Better Angels and its methodology; build the field and effectiveness of dialogue practices designed to address political polarization and social divides and; build thought leadership for same.

ACMHE offers a unique contribution to our Fetzer mission of exploring the relationship between science and spirituality. The annual conference serves to investigate how contemplative pedagogy and epistemology can create greater richness and depth of knowledge.

Funds to be dispersed by the Kalamazoo Community Foundation Fund.