Hey Garden(ers),
Up until last week, the high score on our Snowball machine was in the 700's. Once we started the Snowball Off competition though...y'all got competitive. Congrats to Pinky for coming in at #2👑at over 104 THOUSAND snowballs thrown, and Groovy for coming in at #1 👑❄️with over 114 THOUSAND snowballs thrown and being our official SNOWBALL CHAMPION. We were aghast, shocked and impressed with y'all's commitment to antagonizing the neighborhood with your snowballs. Great job! Should we do this again? Let us know!
⏰ Our events are generally listed in PST/PDT. Need help converting to your time zone? We recommend using World Time Buddy!
📺 Have you been watching Diarra from Detroit? TOMMORROW: Thursday at 4pm PT/7pm ET, some Gardeners will be gathering to watch the season 2 finale! Will Diarra free Chris??? Follow Ry to get there!
💾 Join Helix on September 15th at 5pm PT for Digital Security Doubling! Whether it's to back up/transfer your files, take your info off certain sites, change some settings, etc., let's ~gather~ to get this done! Chatting and swapping knowledge are welcome. RSVP here
🫁 Want to increase your lung capacity? Come to Breathing in the Knowledge Nursery! Every weekday at 9am PT. RSVP here!
🍿 Mondays, B will be hosting Black Movie Night, a now weekly movie (and show) night to highlight movies (and shows) made by, for, and about Black people. The media will generally be entertainment focused, but will also include nights where the intention is education. (Black Folks only.) RSVP Next Movie: Beloved
💃🏾 Co-Twerking is on Tuesdays at 3pm PT with Caroline! RSVP to get notified!
📔 Quiet-ish Reading Club / Connect (QRC) 💜💛📚 meets Tuesdays at 6pm PT! QRC - Garden Edition is where we chill together in mostly quiet company of 45 min reading blocks. Bring your own: book, audiobook, article, magazine, comic book, training manuals, graphic novel, paperwork/forms, poetry, etc. anything you’d like to or need to read. Most of the time will be us practicing sustained silent reading (SSR) in cozy, quiet company together. We will take occasional breaks to chat and socialize - mics optional. Like to be kept up-to-date on QRC meet-ups in Garden? Fill out this interest form. RSVP here
🎥 Name That Movie (Night!) is Wednesday at 5:30pm PT! This week's movie is a horror following a young transgender woman named Sophie who navigates life, dating, and indie filmmaking after an earthquake releases dangerous parasites. Think you know what they are? Come thru and find out! RSVP via the visit page.
🧰 Join misha weekly for tending to our nervous (eco)system - practice sessions, a recurring group space for ongoing support in cultivating skills for navigating stress with the resilience toolkit. Thursdays at 10am PT. RSVP here
🪷 Stretch it out as Caroline leads us in a weekly afternoon Yoga sesh Fridays at 3pm PT by streaming a yoga video from YouTube and following along. Videos will be between 25-45 minutes long between easy to moderate pace. Drop ins are always welcome! RSVP via the calendar on the visit page.
🫂 The next session of Chronic Illness and Long Covid Support Group will be Thursday September 10th from 5:30pm-7:30pm PT with Chanelle! Navigating everything that comes with chronic illness can be difficult - from managing symptoms to experiencing grief over missing your pre-illness life. This is a peer support space where we can share our feelings about living with any chronic/long-term illness, including long COVID, during an ongoing pandemic. RSVP here!
✍🏽 Are you an aspiring writer? Come join The Storytellers' Anthology which is every other Saturday at 1pm PT (next session is September 12th), hosted by Louis! This group is created for writers who want feedback and constructive criticism on their unpublished literary works, especially for those looking to publish their piece, but just need an extra pair of eyes and encouragement. All genres are welcomed and encouraged. RSVP to attend here.
🎭 Places, theater nerds! At Do You Hear the Garden Sing? we watch musical theatre movies, pro-shots (and some slime tutorials) every other week. This is a space to nerd-out about musical theater, enjoy some tunes and even share some hateful takes ;) Our next watch will be Sister Act (1992 movie), a musical crime comedy film about a lounge singer forced to hide in a convent after being placed in a witness protection program. Come join the curtain call on Saturday September 12th at 5pm PT! RSVP!
📝 Saturday September 19th at 12pm PT join Boba for Rooted, a fun and relaxed monthly space to explore a variety of poetic forms and styles. Think of this more like an informal poetry club / co-learning space. While there will be some prepared materials and prompts, this will be a much more collaborative space: we’ll learn from and celebrate each another’s experiences, perspectives, knowledge, questions, and creative instincts. Each "session" will have a short reflective groundings/meditation, followed by exploring some texts, time to write, and a no-pressure opportunity to share our writing. (Would love to have an optional ability to create a mini Garden anthology that could live on an internal padlet as example.) RSVP here
😷 Hang out, chill and play games with Black folks who take COVID precautions at Bonfire in Garden! The next Bonfire will be Saturday September 19th at 5pm PT RSVP here.
❤️🩹 Our Pain We Carry Study Group meets in the Kinship Room on the 3rd Sundays of each month (with occasional adjustments around holidays). Upcoming date: September 20th. Group begins at 2:30pm PT/ 5:30pm ET for reading and discussion. If you prefer to join after reading, we’ll begin practicing the experiential exercises together around 3pm PT/6pm ET. See Deeda for more information & materials. RSVP.
🏳️⚧️ Trans Meetup is every fourth Sunday in Garden, at 2pm PT! Come witness a day that Trans folks have made! The next meetup will be September 27th! Join us by RSVP'ing here. September's session will be facilitated by Ang! Topic: How connection/compassion helps us with reducing dysphoria, increasing confidence, and overall mental health.
☕ Sunday October 4th at 1pm PT, Garden will be hosting its next Social Hour series. Want a place to share your random idea, your new poetic works, to present something special, get feedback or even host at a Garden Social Hour? The format is flexible as needed, and can be a space to practice facilitation skills for those wanting a friendly place to try something new. Want to share your topic at the next, or a future Social Hour? Send us your proposals here! RSVP to attend here.
💻 Do you work from home and sometimes feel a little too isolated from others? Come Co-Work with us in Garden! We are a 24/7 drop in space for folks to join to co-work silently, listen to music, play a game or chat amongst each other in the chat box.
🗺️ The NDN Collective Community Action Fund is a grant for Indigenous frontline organizations, groups, and individuals for direct action initiatives. The Community Action Fund (CAF) grants support non-violent direct actions and organizing efforts that are often urgent and time sensitive. CAF prioritizes frontline, grassroots and community-based efforts that defend Indigenous peoples rights, communities and Nations. Awards are up to $15k. Applications due Oct 15th.
🦗 Each year, A Blade of Grass distributes $25,000 to artists and creative practitioners working throughout the US with 50 grants of $500 each.
Field Funds supports both the public components of a project and the often unseen work that makes collaborative creative practice possible, such as research and relationship building. This program supports specific needs common to socially engaged art including artist-led gatherings, accessibility & translation, and documentation & archiving. Applications close Sep 30th.
🌍 CONNECT, one of the Equality Fund’s grantmaking streams, is now open to applicants. We welcome collaborations addressing this period of intensifying anti-rights forces by building relationships across movements that have not historically worked together and now seek to work equitably towards shared goals. This stream of funding is designed to support intentional collective efforts between feminist organizations and adjacent movements to build power together. We are looking to support collaborations that connect feminist actors and other allies in the Global South. Grants will be an initial two years in length with potential for additional years, with an expected start date of February 1, 2027. The maximum total grant amount available is $500,000 to $1,000,000 CAD per year. Apply by September 16th. See Also: Expression of Interest Template
🪙 Emerging Justice Fund supports UK based organisations that are campaigning for change on human rights or equality issues but are not yet using or shaping the law to do this. You may already provide advice to individuals and/or share legal information. This fund can support you to explore how the law could help you to influence change. Up to £50,000 (up to 12 months); or £50,000 to £75,000 per year (up to 3 years). Apply by September 17th!
💼 The Trevor Project seeks a remote Chief People Officer. As the Chief People Officer (CPO), you will help lead The Trevor Project into its next chapter of transformation and resilience. Serving as a key member of the Executive team and a trusted thought partner to the CEO, you will set the vision and execute a scalable, modern human capital strategy across all stages of our employee lifecycle. In this remote environment, you will bridge organizational silos and design a high-accountability people infrastructure. Your work will directly empower our dedicated workforce, ensuring our team is culturally unified, deeply supported, and structurally positioned to save LGBTQ+ young lives. Compensation: $260-$280k. Apply ASAP.
🏢 Cloaked, a consumer privacy and identity platform, is seeking is seeking a remote Customer Support - Privacy Consultant at $25-$30 an hour. Apply ASAP.
🌈 Give Us The Floor (GUTF) is a peer-support platform and community for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. We connect young people ages 13–24 with peers who understand their experience, because we know that connection saves and changes lives. We are Looking for a (remote) Marketing Coordinator with strong communication skills who's excited to build an audience and a movement for a mission that matters for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. You'll work alongside our youth ambassador and creative team to create and schedule content and online events, track what's working, keep us on-track with compliance and content trends, and help us find the right voices to amplify our message. This is a great fit for someone with some experience under their belt who's ready to do real, visible work for a cause they care about. Compensation: $40/hr, Part Time. Apply ASAP.
🛜 Wikimedia Foundation is hiring internationally for the remote roles of Software Engineer III, Product Safety & Integrit (Compensation: $92,267 – $144,201) and Senior Social Media Project Manager (Compensation: $91,435 – $140,810). Apply to these jobs ASAP by clicking on their titles!
🦎 Cosmic Healing and Octavia's Chariot are hosting the second annual Interlocking Systems of Liberation (ISOL) during the the first 2 weekends of October (3, 4, 10, & 11) on zoom. Find more information at the link or sign up directly here.
💾 We put out a call for laptop/desktop donations for fellow Garden members and we already were able to pair someone with a donated device! THANK YOU all for your kindness and care! We are still on the hunt for 2 more laptops/desktops for Garden(ers) that need devices for their work and/or to connect with the community here in Garden. If you/your organization have a device or two to spare, simply reply to this email. 🙏🏽
🥐 If for whatever reason, you are in the US and find yourself, or someone you care about, to be food insecure, here are three sites to find food banks where you/they are: Food Finder, FindHelp and Feeding America. If these are not resources you personally need, please share with your folks.
🍉 Centering Palestine has a zoom every Tuesday at 5pm PT, along with other resources to show up for Palestine available here.
😷 World Health Network has a weekly call to organize community members against mask bans every Friday at 12pm PT.
📢 As a follow-up to the Anti-Blackness sessions GenDoc facilitated with us a few months ago, she has graciously provided this Notes on Anti-Blackness write-up which shares some key takeaways about how Anti-Blackness shows up in BIPOC spaces and what non-Black folks can be doing to support dismantling that.
🌻 We are continuing to open Garden up to more community orgs who would like to share space with us here. If you are part of an org that may benefit from office/event space here, please email info@meetatgarden.com
🎉Want to host your birthday, or the birthday of a friend in Garden? Check out our Birthday Guide and email us!
💌 Don't forget, we can design and host non-Garden virtual events too.
Until next our avatars meet,
🪄Al , 🪻J Mase & 🪴Kwaku
PS: Have a one-time-event or a recurring event and need a place to host? Email us at info@meetatgarden.com!
Garden is a free 24/7 space, but it does cost money for us to maintain it on Gather.Town. If you'd like to donate to this work, consider throwing some money in the pot here. To send donations directly through our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, email us!