Wisdom Board & Staff Retreat at ilani Resort, Washington

Wisdom of the Elders recently participated in a board and staff retreat hosted at Ilani Resort in Ridgefield, Washington. Where our team worked on strategy, goals, and team building for the next 6 months. We would like to extend a special thank you to the Developing Successful People Foundation for facilitating Wisdom Board and Staff Retreat.

As Wisdom has been transitioning and growing, we are taking a look at specific goals and strategies for all of our programming to access how we can best grow and better engage with our Indigenous communities and collaborative partnerships in the Portland Metro Region as well as those we will be working with throughout the states of Oregon and Washington in the years to come.
We are committed to contributing to the educational experiences of our youth and adults by providing training opportunities in the Ecological, STEAM, Multimedia, and Wellness sectors, with the most important goal of helping to heal our people and the land.

Dr. Joseph Hunter, Developing Successful Peoples’ President and Board Chair, facilitated our three-day Retreat. He was a great help in guiding us through the tasks of realigning our strategic plans for the next 3-5 year span. The last 25 years laid the groundwork and curriculum that has been utilized to date. However, we found the need to reassess some elements to make certain Wisdom stays aligned with the ever-growing needs of our Indigenous and broader community and as well as determine how we will deliver our programs with more depth and impact.

The Developing Successful People Foundation was created for the purpose of improving the lives of at-risk school-age children through the introduction, fostering, and/or promotion of Christian values as well as developing children’s character by investing in them through programs and other activities that help children be successful in life. Fundable projects include religious, charitable, scientific, and educational purposes consistent with the most recent tax code cessation of 501 (c) (3) regulations.

Acceptable and specific projects must include goals that meet one or more of the following goals of the Foundation:

• The Arts and Student Motivation
• School Leadership and Students
• Improve the lives of at-risk school-age children by participating in extracurricular activities and/or church activities and events
• Aid, support or assist Bible translation and related activities
• Aid, support or assist schools, churches, and Non-profits with technology, equipment, and facility improvements with the focus on children and teens or the advancement of the Gospel.

Wisdom of the Elders, Inc offers internships in:

• Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK): An Indigenous-based curriculum combined with hands-on training can help lead to living-wage jobs and possible opportunities to join our Wisdom Workforce Development Restoration and Conservation crew or to have possible job opportunities in the ecological sector.
  Wisdom Agricultural Business Incubator (WABI): Our Business Incubator combines the curriculum of the TEK with First Foods and business training to help those interested in creating their First Foods ventures.
• Wisdom Youth Science Education (WYSE): The WYSE program focuses on the STEM/STEAM curriculum. We integrate Indigenous ways of thinking and strategies for teachers and the students to have a more insightful perspective on the sciences and how to navigate the lessons from Western sciences for a fuller understanding of the ways the two concepts converge and or diverge.
• Discovering Our Stories (DOS) Wisdom’s Historical Trauma curriculum and accompanying films address the Historical Trauma of the Indigenous people of this continent and help in the understanding and healing of the lived experiences and how the effects are still relevant today.
• Multimedia: Our films and documentaries have been foundational for Wisdom since the beginning. We offer summer camps to train in the use of the equipment, and how to create and edit footage for use in training for our interns in all programs. Wisdom films and interviews of elders and educators preserve the knowledge of those who have gone before us and allows us to share this with all tribes who contributed and for the new generations coming up.

We are grateful for the facilitation, training, and support from the DSP Foundation grant that Wisdom was awarded to help accomplish the goals for our internships, ongoing curriculum development, preservation of archived films, creation of new films, and jobs training program.