Moonshot Thinking in the Year of the Ox
Happy New Year Moonshot family!
Last month we celebrated the Lunar New Year, an important holiday for me and my family and many others across the country and world (though, sadly, no hotpot for me this year in the pandemic) and one that marks a time of reflection, gratitude, and new beginnings. At Moonshot, we’re coming out of a year full of challenges, reflection, and learning, and moving into the Year of the Ox with new leadership transitions, recruitment for a FIFTH cohort, and new programming, a full-time Residency, launching this year.
Oxes are methodical, dedicated creatures, and the Year of the Ox is about endurance and strength. They remind me of the legacies of endurance that came before me, and the ancestors who paved the way for me to work at an organization like Moonshot: my grandpa who immigrated to China in order to accompany his younger sister so she could go to university in the States; Grace Lee Boggs, the daughter of Chinese immigrants and labor organizer who dedicated her activism to fighting to workers’ rights in relation to classism and racism; Yuri Kochiyama, interned as a child in the United State’s Japanese American Internment Camps, who fought for the economic and cultural liberation for Black Americans, as well as the rights of political prisoners. The Year of the Ox calls me to remember those who created a path for me, a Queer, Asian American leader, to work in coalition within communities of color to disrupt the status quo and create new systems that center the experiences of our most marginalized in order to create liberation for all.
I’m entering into this new year with the strength of the Ox and the origins of the name Moonshot on the top of my mind, thinking of the opportunity that lies ahead as our communities and fractured systems are beginning to recover. Now we can choose to build something new, to lead with “Moonshot thinking” that pushes us to dream outside of what we already know in order to create something that future generations will look back to and say - my work is possible because of what they created.
We’ve seen, despite the arguments that it would never work or that it was too difficult or that the funding didn’t exist, that when forced with few, if any, other options, we can make these changes. We learned, in the past year, that remote work for many of us is feasible, that funding for our most marginalized communities can be found, that personal boundaries and a focus on wellness and sustainability is possible, and critical, for long term change. We thought we could only think 10% differently from our norm, when in fact, we can, and must think ten times bigger. The Year of the Ox calls for us to take our reflections, our learnings, and the strength we’ve built up (and that’s been tested) over the last year, and apply all of it to the new future we have the opportunity to create.
So what kind of “Moonshot thinking” is happening here at Moonshot edVentures, with new staff transitions and a whole new landscape in politics?
Recruiting for our fifth Cohort of leaders! If you or a leader you know is interested in launching a school or program, please check out our application here. Our current priority areas are for school founders or ventures in special education, social emotional learning/mental health,
Launching our first-ever Residency program, a full-time program for future school launchers to provide the intensive, comprehensive support we believe new school founders need for a successful launch.
Cohort 4 is currently planning pilots as part of their Cultivate stage of the Fellowship, which will begin the last week of February.
Testing out a “Train the Trainer” model through an incubator pilot this summer, where we work with a handful of organizations who are interested in creating a similar Fellowship in their respective states or cities
Providing our 68 alumni with a menu of services to further their development and launch, including working 1:1 with our Expert Bench, a cadre of 12 expert consultants, accessing Direct to Fellows Learning Fund, a micro-grant opportunity, getting 1:1 coaching & support on career development and fundraising from the Moonshot team, and more.
We’re excited to dig in, and grateful to our amazing community that supports this work. If you’re reading this and you have an idea or current program to improve positive outcomes for students and families in Colorado communities, then apply for Cohort 5 of the Moonshot Fellowship!