The Braxton Institute Summer 2025 Golden Repair Fellowships for Reparations Leaders
“I plan to share the learning from this space by engaging in conversations about healing and moral injury beyond traditional contexts, offering support to those navigating similar challenges, and modeling vulnerability and reflection in my personal and professional interactions. I also hope to integrate the insights and practices I gained into community and family spaces to foster understanding and growth.”
The Golden Repair Fellows Circle of Care
The Golden Repair Fellows Circles of Care offers a space of growth and healing for Reparations leaders both individually and communally. Our Circle of Care is based on the tested model of a rigorous Henry B. Luce Foundation funded program for Black clinicians, ministers and other community leaders piloted by the Braxton Institute during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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There are potential ways to use learnings and tools [from the fellowship] to help aid healing and accountability work that myself and other practitioners have started within the reparations ecosystem including building ethics and accountability framework/guidance for all practitioners, organizers, and funders to opt into. ”
Summer 2025 Golden Repair Fellow Dreisen Heath (Why We Can’t Wait Reparations Coalition) teaching on The Book of Joy
Through spiritual and artistic disciplines and contemplative practices, 2025 Golden Repair Fellows learned and shared spiritual disciplines for leadership and the fine art of witnessing our own and each other’s moral suffering as we practiced extending compassion to ourselves and others. Fellows came together in a tenderly facilitated space that provided mutual support and recognition of one another’s unique personhood and callings. As a group they experienced the impact of community on healing, learning, accepting support and cultivating new ideas.
“The fellowship has expanded my thought process on how healing can occur. ”
Summer 2025 Golden Repair Fellow John P. Comer (National Redress Movement) sharing reflections with the group
The Fellowship explored the importance of rest, trust and trust-building, psychologies for resisting and thriving, and remaining connected to our ancestors, not only our genealogical and blood relatives, but also our cultural and political ancestors. Together, Golden Repair Fellows learned tools of trauma stewardship that will help them stay present to struggle without being consumed by it and also tools for managing their own distress so as to mitigate the risk of unintentionally causing harm in their Reparations work. Together we have created a new community of practice that is also a community of resistance. Fellows leave Golden Repair strengthened and transformed by their experiences and time together and with a rich array of knowledge and skills they will carry with them into their Reparations work and daily lives.
Summer 2025 Golden Repair Fellow Deleshā George (St Louis Reparations Commission) presenting on “Rest as Repair”
“The Golden Repair Fellowship has given me space to reflect in new ways and reminds me that creativity does not live only within me. Listening to my peer Fellows, I was inspired by their stories and wisdom which proves that community can be a powerful source of creativity and healing.”
“The fellowship was a gift of time. Time to think and regroup and gain fuel to continue the journey.”