Being Unafraid of the Impossible: Moonshot edVentures
Like so many others during 2020, we have been wrestling with bringing justice and accountability for the violent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and Breonna Taylor, and the other names that have not made it into mainstream consciousness. We are reminded in this moment of some of the very reasons Moonshot was created.
Dr. Howard Fuller fireside chat facilitated by Cory Montalvo, founder of YEBO, at a Talk to Action meeting in 2019.
In 2016, a group of community members, struck by the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, among many other black men, began assembling for house meetings to process the events. The group soon evolved into the volunteer network called Talk to Action - a group of K-12 educators who wanted to ensure that we could achieve a more racially just education ecosystem by talking about the things that typically went unspoken and tackling issues of power and justice from different angles.
We landed on the idea that in order to change what the future looked like for black men, black people, and for racial justice as a whole, we needed to focus on power -- how it is defined and who holds positions of power. For so many of us, this journey has been building our own future - one that looks and feels like the kind of spaces we, our students, and their families, want to be a part of. What we hoped Talk to Action would create was a wildly different, joyful, affirming, and loving space for educators and students of color. We learned through the TTA space that people were hungry to innovate, but lacked the resources or access to launch their ideas successfully and sustainably.
Moonshot Fellows in Cohort 2 at a weekly evening workshop.
And so came the Moonshot Fellowship. Moonshot was created from the core belief that change will only come when it is for our communities, by our communities. Our leaders are incredibly talented, skilled, and visionary, but haven’t yet been given the adequate support and resources to build out their ideas. And by supporting the local and extraordinary talent here in Denver Metro, we see Moonshot as its own form of protest against the current systems of inequity and oppression.
Our aim is that Moonshot is that space for local, underrepresented leaders where creativity and innovation meets equity and justice.
Marianna Lucero, founder of In’Lakech Denver Arts, Cohort 3
Our hope is that we together realize that the world we’re fighting for takes a lot of us and takes a long time. Moonshot was always meant to be a place where leaders can be unafraid to dream big for their communities, and we plan to keep ourselves moving forward until we no longer have the ability to do so. We’re in it for the long haul, and it requires from all of us a sustained commitment to this work, and the leaders we support.
We can’t stress enough that our Fellows (and we) oscillate between being raring to go, and needing time and space to cope with where we are and where the world is, and we need to continue to make space for both.
Our students can’t wait any longer. If you are passionate and dedicated to this urgent and vital work, join the movement of education leaders, innovators, and entrepreneurs revolutionizing Denver Education by filling out a Cohort 5 Interest Form and learning more about the Moonshot Fellowship Application Process.
We can’t wait to connect with all you movers and shakers out there who are eager and ready to make a lasting impact transforming education for our students and communities.
Written by the Moonshot edVentures team
Published on Thursday, December 17, 2020