Over the summer of 2021, I had the opportunity to work with Tortoise Media’s Community Network team. I was attracted to their vision to build a “slow news revolution.” Rather than chasing after “breaking news” and producing a barrage of endless shallow soundbites, the people at Tortoise are in the business of taking the time to really delve deeply into the issues and forces that actually shape the world. Instead of being groups of journalists cloistering themselves away to talk only with elites, Tortoise a the passion to democratize our shared human story, especially amplifying those voices that are under-represented and under-heard in a more typical newsroom. The Community Network is responsible for seeking out and bringing those under-represented voices into the conversation, and one way that they seek to do this - the process in which I had the privilege to be included within - is to reach out to and build partnerships with nonprofit organizations that are already serving such under-represented voices.
During my six-week placement with Tortoise Media, I reached out to 150 nonprofits in the New England region and beyond, which served a variety of under-represented populations. I had the opportunity to converse and network with national organizations like Year Up, which helps to connect under-privileged people with skills and opportunities for rewarding careers, as well as more local organizations like Progressive Massachusetts, which focuses on building grassroots coalitions to enact meaningful political change in the region. Tortoise encouraged me to take an active role throughout the entire process, from finding and outreaching to the organizations initially to fully on-boarding them into the Tortoise news conversations at the end. For myself, with a naturally shy disposition, this activity challenged me to discover and develop skills and mentalities that I was unaccustomed to utilizing, and forced me to stretch myself to new limits in interacting with many people that I felt to be “out of my league”, so to speak; that is, people who are much more experienced in the work of making the world a better place.
I believe thus that my partnership with Tortoise Media gave me some invaluable experience in building relationships and coalitions with diverse peoples to realize vision and passion for the development of a better world. Being stretched to new frontiers with which I was unfamiliar, I had to ask for help from more experienced mentors and learn from their past wisdom. As well, I gained a firsthand look at the challenges inherent in building a new movement and coalition from scratch, and developed the courage of action that comes from experience on the field. Consequently, I am now much better able to envision and imagine the process of bringing people together to make the world a better place, and feel much better equipped for making such coalitions happen. Although I don’t know what opportunities will come for me in the future, I plan to take what I learned from this Leadership-in-Action experience to try to help make my visions of a better world into reality. I am thus grateful for the experience.
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