Rooted in Love: Forty Years, One Room

In late August, more than 50 grantee partners, board members, consultant partners, and staff gathered online to mark the St. Joseph Fund’s (SJF) 40th anniversary. Partners joined from Alaska, California, Montana, Oregon, and Washington for a half-day of celebration, reflection, and collective visioning. Justice Funders (JF), facilitated the celebration with live graphic recording by Taslim Van Hattum.

The morning began with a grounding practice and an invitation to time-travel virtually. Facilitators asked attendees to imagine taking four steps back, one for each decade, then to walk forward again through our evolution from a traditional foundation to a grantmaker centered on community self-determination, power building, and systems change.

Partners marked the milestones alongside us, from some of our earliest initiatives, the Community Building Initiative, Intersections Initiative, Black and Indigenous Birth Justice Collaborative, Cultivate to Illuminate, through the Healing Tides – NHPI Leadership and Renewal and Phase 2 of Intersections.

Jason Lacsamana, Director, Programs and Partnerships, opened the day and named the moment plainly. For many communities, this is a time of crisis, and many people are losing hope. But in working, building, and struggling together, he offered, there is hope and beauty.

He also shared a message from Gabriela Robles, Chief Executive.

“What began as a commitment to support our communities has become a powerful expression of love and compassion. Thank you for being rooted in love, and for helping the fund continue to grow as a source of hope, healing and support.”

What followed felt like a long conversation among people building something together.

A Montana-based partner described gathering tribal elders when the SJF board met for its annual retreat on her home ground. She said the experience moved her work forward more quickly. A Healing Tides partner spoke about the gift of multiple Pacific Islander organizations learning from and lifting one another. A 10-year partner traced the origin of Intersections to a strategic planning meeting held the day after the 2016 election, when the country shifted, but the shared work did not.

That thread carried into the morning’s collective visioning session. Facilitator Kimi Mojica of JF offered the starling as a guide. In murmuration, no single bird tracks the whole flock. Each one moves in sync with those closest to it, and the whole formation turns together. With this visual in mind, partners then worked in small groups to name what a future rooted in love asks for (land and water, rest, intergenerational knowledge, abundance in place of scarcity) and what is still missing.

In the afternoon, partners chose among workshops on generative conflict, joy as a collective resource, metabolizing grief, transformative organizing, and leading in hard times.

The day closed with a small gift: succulents, repotted by SJF staff’s hands and mailed out ahead of time. As Amy Huang, Program Officer, explained, each plant will be repotted again someday, in another home, another environment, which is a beautiful, living reminder of the work we do together.

Forty years ago, the Sisters of St. Joseph planted something without knowing what it would become. What it grew to culminated in this celebration of more than 50 people across five states, still tending it. The gathering opens a celebratory year, and the conversations here will carry into the next.

Forty years in, we are still planting.