The Linking Leaders Partnership

Tiwahe Foundation is one of four lead organizations in a partnership called the Linking Leaders which brings together four networks of leaders of color in the Indigenous, Black, Asian, and Latinx communities. A shared effort of the African American Leadership Forum, Coalition of Asian American Leaders, LatinoLEAD, and Tiwahe Foundation, Linking Leaders focuses on strengthening connections across our networks in order to increase our shared leadership and solidarity practices so that we can advance powerful systems change work that aims to achieve racial justice and equity.

Tiwahe Foundation

Linking Leaders brings together our four leadership networks from across Minnesota that represent over 20,000 POCI leaders. Together, Linking Leaders is working to build capacity of our organizations and all our leaders and alumni to lead in the values of solidarity movement work. Over the last year, we have developed a new organizational model that brings the work in-house so that solidarity is not another project or area of focus but braided into all parts of our organizations. Into 2024, we’ll be implementing a new action plan to help our leaders learn about each other.

For that purpose, we launched the Truth-in-History Project in 2023, a major initiative with Team Dynamics to gather community stories of place across our populations and geographics in Minnesota via video. Our hope is longevity and use by our communities and beyond to understand the rich complexity of culture and experience we share in different locales (including bodies of water) across Minnesota. Future phases involve deep community engagement campaigns and working with strategic partners to create programming and resources for this to be an ongoing project with potential co-ownership or partners.

The Basis of our Solidarity Framework

Current Conditions

Historic structures exist to uphold racism, part of that history has been to keep communities of color separate rather than united
The 4 Linking Leaders Networks seek to undo those systems and their impacts through a concrete practice of solidarity
The 4 Networks understand justice and prosperity for each of their specific communities are interdependent with one another
The 4 Networks acknowledge that practicing solidarity does not mean nor require all 4 networks engage in uniform activities at the same time or in the same way

Assumptions

Trust is essential to a practice of solidarity
Increased Trust will allow the networks to act in solidarity
A framework for practice allows the 4 Networks to do some things together in service to shared success
This work is aspirational

612-722-0999

The Linking Leaders Partnership

African American Leadership Forum

Coalition of Asian American Leaders

LatinoLEAD

Tiwahe Foundation

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