Administrators WVC 2 Posted December 1, 2021 Administrators Share Posted December 1, 2021 Dear Friends, We hope this letter finds you well and enjoying the beauty of this season. It has been a challenging time for all of us since we last gathered for the 2019 Women’s Visionary Congress. While we miss opportunities to connect in person, the WVC has been busy preparing the ground for new projects that we want to share with you. Since the first Women’s Congress in 2007, the WVC has presented the work of women researchers, healers, artists, and activists who explore expanded consciousness. Our original mission was to emphasize the voices of women who were underrepresented in publications and conferences that examined psychedelics. We have played a central role promoting women in this field and providing mutual support for those who took great personal and professional risks to pursue this knowledge. Many of the women we championed early in their careers are now leaders of psychedelic communities. Our WVC Grants Program has provided funding for many women to expand their contributions to this body of knowledge. The WVC now sees other communities that are being overlooked and we are stepping forward again. Photo Courtesy of tokinwoman.blogspot.com In Service of Elders The WVC is refocusing its mission to support the work of elders in psychedelic communities. We have lost a number of our elders during the past two years, and we want to honor the ones who are still with us. While psychedelics are enjoying a renaissance, elders who advocated for psychedelics when it was dangerous to do so are often unrecognized. The WVC plans to focus on elders in its grants program which has awarded more than $100,000 to psychedelic women since 2008. The WVC has demonstrated over many years that we are wise stewards of funding from our community. We invite you to please make a tax exempt gift to the WVC before the end of the year so that we can continue the work we began in 2007. Make your checks payable to Women’s Visionary Council, PO Box 5035, Berkeley, CA 94705 or donate online via Paypal. A donation of $75 gives you membership to the WVC, discounts for WVC events and the WVC newsletter. Donate Online If you are not in a position of abundance with money, we welcome donations of time and expertise. The WVC is currently seeking psychedelic women who would like to work with us on bookkeeping, proofreading transcripts of presentations, tech support, and event production. Please contact us for more information or to share ideas. Share Your Ideas As we shift our attention to serving elders, we are listening deeply to wise women in our community. Jane Straight, who recently received a WVC Laura Huxley Grant to support the creation of her new book Cultivating Allies: A Comprehensive Guide to the Propagation and Care of Plants of Ethnobotanical Significance, offers this insight. “May we always honor those that walked the path before us, for they are the very heart and soul of our families and communities. Elders serve as wisdom keepers of the past, present, and future. We refer to our sacred plant allies as Grandmother and Grandfather. It’s been said that the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elder.” ~ Jane Straight Cultivating Allies is the culmination of decades of Jane’s lived knowledge of growing entheogenic plant teachers and other herbal allies. Both a practical and metaphysical guide for cultivating relationships with significant plants, this book is a gift to our collective wisdom and emblematic of the projects we want to nurture. "As an elder myself,” says Jane, “I am deeply grateful to the WVC for intentionally supporting my work over the years by offering a trusted platform for my evolving voice." Events on the Horizon Funds raised by the WVC are also being used to organize new gatherings in 2022 that highlight the voices of elders. All WVC events have always been open to people of all genders and will continue this tradition. In addition to an upcoming 2022 Women’s Congress, the WVC is currently planning a series of “Return to the Roots” events where we will gather at historic farms and botanical gardens to learn more about plant allies. Stay tuned for more news about our upcoming visits to these gardens. We will be exploring the possibilities and learning how to share valuable in-person experiences with a virtual audience, making our events more accessible. New Executive Director Leads Archive Project The WVC has a new Executive Director, Kristina Soriano. Kristina is a classical pianist and music teacher who works at the California Institute of Integral Studies. As we honor the trailblazers who lit the path for us to venture into inner space, Kristina is organizing a project to archive in cyberspace thirteen years of presentations at the Women’s Congress and other WVC events. Ken Adams, a psychedelic elder and filmmaker, is working with the WVC to upload more than two-hundred and forty video presentations to the WVC secure cloud server. With permission from the speakers, these presentations will be transcribed and available for reading. Past presenters will be invited to contribute new material to update these archival recordings. Ken is also producing short videos of WVC talks that will be uploaded to our social media feeds. WVC Website and Visionary Community Portal At the 2019 Women’s Visionary Congress in Oakland, the WVC put into action two of its major goals: to increase access to the resources, wisdom and experience present in our community, and to build stronger connections with allies who share our values. As part of this mission, we unveiled our new Women's Visionary Congress website in July 2021. Our online discussion space supports the expansion of interaction and collaboration beyond the limits of in-person events. This project also reflects our ongoing mission to amplify the voices of elders, women and people of color. This new interactive site offers information about WVC projects and presenters and allows you to share updates about your most recent work, your thoughts and ideas, resources, events and camaraderie. Features include forums, a calendar, events, and public and private groups with abilities to post blogs, share all types of files, engage in discussion, and chat with other members. The WVC highly values privacy and security, so the new site has extensive moderation controls and up-to-date security measures. To interact and post on the new site, you must register as a member, but public content is viewable to guests. The community portal includes videos from the 2019 Women’s Congress. In June 2021 we tested it with virtual tea parties for the 2019 presenters, and we hope to offer more WVTea Parties to all members soon. Please find the WVC on our social media channels and invite others into our expanding community! Thank you for your support. We look forward to seeing you online and in person at upcoming gatherings. In visionary alliance, The Women of the WVC Donate Online Link to post Share on other sites
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