Remembering the Why
In June, TWP’s Indigenous Lands Program team participated in a 3-day staff retreat with our partner, Montezuma Land Conservancy. Bringing together 6 staff from each team in Cortez, CO, the retreat focused on visiting sites of the traditional harvest program and river restoration structures, planning shared work in coming years, and celebrating our new joint staff member, Wyatt Wilson. TWP’s ILP resource coordinator, Zoe Bashkin, shares her experiences and insights from her days with the team:
“It was really great seeing Southern Colorado and our projects, to have this convening of people I’ve written about or met with remotely, to have us all in a shared space, celebrating the work. And it was just so amazing to see the projects, the river, the water table lifted. And to get to see the land and be on it with folks. To put faces to names and places to names, see the specific mountains we're talking about, see the water that we care about.
Since I work on such an administrative side of things, it’s really nice to be able to route back to this – this is the why.
I just feel so grateful that TWP has the capacity for our team to do something like this. We weren't doing any direct project implementation, but we visited our projects, and we met with community partners, and we had dinners, and we shared stories (and the guys taught me how to drive stick shift in the subaru!).
I credit a lot of this culture to Sebastian and also to James, as the director of ILP. He’s a great leader, he’s great at what he does. But he's also just an incredible person to work for, because he creates such a culture on our team that it's okay to not just be accountable to each other professionally, but also personally. We’re all colleagues, and we’re also friends.
I think what also makes TWP a very special place to work, and also why TWP has such low turnover compared to most nonprofits, is this care. I've heard Sebastian say the work will always be there, let's just take a moment to take care of each other and ourselves. And then the work gets done. It doesn't just get done – it’s better work. And then we just want to do more of it, and it just feels so much more purposeful.
This job makes me feel valued as a person, not just as an employee. I just feel grateful I get to engage in labor in a way that feels dignified and meaningful. I feel like I’m not just working, I’m a part of something.”
