Victoria Santos
Victoria Santos
Co-Executive Director @ Young Women Empowered
“There’s a reckoning with our young people. They know that to a large extent, a lot of the elders have not been acting as elders. They know that they’re having to take the reins in setting a new course. That’s why they’re out there in the streets.”
Action Prompts
// SELF REFLECTION
Victoria reminds us that one of the ways mainstream business culture exploits you is keeping you so busy that you don't question it.
1. If you weren’t so busy all the time, what would you spend time learning?
2. How would you show up differently with the kids in your life?
3. Who would you reach out to or spend time with?
4. How would you invest in your community?
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// TEAM EXPLORATION
You have an opportunity to explore your biases and blind spots towards those with less experience. How are you valuing the fresh perspectives of younger voices in your enterprise?
Gather all the Gen Zs & Millennials in your organization for 1 hour.
Individually, spend 10 minutes reflecting on the following prompts.
1. What are the top strengths & challenges of your generation?
2. A common misunderstanding about our generation is…
3. The opportunity I see for our company to be more supportive for our generation is…
Then as a group, spend 20 minutes together to discuss and compile the key themes.
Decide how you would like to share your insights with the rest of your company and make it happen!
Resources
Your value as a human is not about constantly producing, and achieving. Don’t forget to make time for your own playfulness and creativity.
We love these facilitation activities, games and tools you can do with your team, by Partners for Youth Empowerment.
Support the work of Young Women Empowered
Victoria Santos (she/her), Co-Executive Director of Young Women Empowered (Y-WE), works to advance social justice and racial equity with institutions, schools and community organizations. Victoria is a Spanish-fluent Afro-Latina immigrant born in the Dominican Republic.
Victoria’s wise words are a call to expand your awareness. She has a vital vantage point, with an intersectional perspective that can help everyone snap out of the extractive, harmful holding pattern we’ve been trapped in across business, government and non-profit sectors.
Y-WE serves diverse young women* through programming that enables growth, transformation, and healing. Their culture is rooted in cultivating a community of belonging and creative expression. Emerging Y-WE voices have been at the forefront of BLM activism, and are collectively raising awareness of the connections between racial, social, and environmental justice. They’ve launched new programming in 2020 in response to the most urgent needs of their community, including Blackout Healing, carefully curated healing spaces for Black folx led by Reagan Jackson, Program Director.
The energy at a Y-WE event is nothing short of magic. When a group of young people who have existed at the margins, and often been forgotten, find one another and finally feel seen, is a joy to behold.
*those who identify as women or girls or who were assigned female at birth.
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Recognizing Interdependence & Expanding Consciousness
Right now the main piece that I'm concerned about and really honing in on, the more I keep looking at the different issues that I care about, is our level of consciousness. If we maintain the level of consciousness in which we are currently operating, then all of the harm we’ve been perpetrating on each other, on the planet, and on other species will continue.
The next layer is the way that we’ve been treating the feminine, and the way that we have trampled upon the rights of women and girls. Needing equity is a response to not having balance, it impacts the environment and the way that we treat nature.
Our lack of consciousness makes us believe that we're separate. It makes us believe that I can go over here and I can create all of these disasters, I can bomb these people, and I can poison them, and I can do all of these things to all the species and it's not going to have an impact on me.
If I don't grow my internal capacity, I won’t be able to be OK with someone simply because of the way they look, or simply because of the way they express their gender identity. If I don't work to expand my level of consciousness around that, I'm going to be in a contracted state of fear, and I'm going to continue to perpetrate harm and be an advocate for harm.
We haven't gotten to a point of understanding that we are living on one planet, we are on this beautiful little ball that’s hauling us through the galaxy, in this contained system that’s all working together. If we don't pay attention to it and support life, then we're doomed. It doesn't matter how many fences or walls or whatever I choose to build, it's not going to keep me safe.
The Reckoning & Rise of Our Youth
On one hand, I see and hear how painful this time is for young women in terms of what's being perpetrated on them and their families, and the level of fear, anxiety, and grief that it creates. It's just too much, and at the same time, I do hear and feel a level of strength that's coming from the young people.
There’s a reckoning with our young people. They know that to a large extent, a lot of the elders have not been acting as elders. They know that they’re having to take the reins in setting a new course. That’s why they're out there in the streets. That's why a lot of them are realizing that even the way that they’ve been educated has been a miseducation. They’re coming out of school in debt to a system that is about exploitation and extraction.
Stay Busy, Don’t Ask Questions
Mainstream business culture is reliant on me being so busy that I don't question it.
We’ve always just been going, going, going, going, going and producing and producing and extracting, and more, and more, and more, consuming, consuming, consuming.
This has been a time of reflection. For me personally, I’ve had to question everything. Everything.
What is really of value to you? What are your values? What are your values in relation to your family, your children, in your work? If you have only this amount of time left, how are you going to spend it?
Consumption & Competition Overload
I keep trying to create the world I want to live in, a culture I want to support. What’s considered counterculture now actually was the predominant way that cultures lived, and the way that most of the world still lives. It’s not “counter” at all. The counter is having one person make billions, and billions, and billions, and billions of dollars at the expense of the Earth and other people. That's the culture that's killing us.
What happens with competition in this dominant culture, is it becomes not about your own gifts that you came into the world to offer, it becomes about pleasing someone. Then you’re enslaved to it.
Connection to What Makes Us Thrive
We've been creating a culture in which the family has been disconnected. When a lot of children are born, the parents immediately have to go back to work and the child gets placed in some sort of care. The bond doesn't even get a chance to develop.
That separation has repercussions. Why should it be a fight to get good parental leave? Why? Because they don’t see the harm that is done to the child. Same thing with illness. It's like, you're ill? You're not producing. You're not taken care of. The way we look at health care. It's supposed to be a human right, that we can have good healthcare and support each other. No. You have to fight for healthcare? Why? Even clean water! We have to fight for clean water. We have to fight to protect our waters? Why?
All these different things that support thriving communities, thriving life, we have we act like it’s not natural to have it, that profits need to be made. It’s one of the systemic problems that causes us to over-consume, to have hatred so easily penetrate our hearts, to have addiction. We're a country that is one of the most addicted countries on the planet. Why? People are trying to fill the void that could only really be filled by having deep connection with each other, and with a planet.
Another Way Starts With Asking Why
There are some companies trying to break through some of the hierarchical paradigms, and have the workers share in the abundance.
We do need to be able to produce for each other, but the thing is, how do we do it? Do we do it in a way that's harmful? Or do we do it in a way that is in alignment with the principles and values of preserving our Earth and supporting each other? Are we re-purposing things so resources aren’t just getting extracted? Are we really supporting people and their labor? We have to look at how we're going about using the product and sharing the abundance of our goods and services.
A Vision of the Highest Good
My hope is that the values that we have at Y-WE, to share power, accessibility, removing barriers -- that they help us to reawaken something that's already in us, so we can live from that place.
How do we do it with integrity, with love and compassion, so individuals can really fulfill who they came here to be? I want to create the space for us to figure out what we’re here to do, and then do it without causing harm to each other.
There are a whole bunch of organizations across the globe that are really working really hard on helping people to remember that we are good, that we are goodness, that this planet is a gift. We're here to manifest that which is best and highest for all of us.
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Join The Tour & Get Your Free Guide Book!
Use this collection of 28 self reflection prompts and team activities. Each one is designed to support you in exploring empathy, and building a work culture in alignment with your values and vision.