In the final weeks of the Spring term, 2025, students in the WDCO certificate program debuted their ideas in our “Dolphin Schools”. The Dolphin Schools provides students with the opportunity to showcase their innovations and what they studied during the course of their time in the program. This process invites dialogue with stakeholders, advisors and potential partners and investors as students ask partners to declare “We are in!” to support the work these students will take forward.
Below are the summaries, videos and more from these session with Lydia Hatfield, Joty Dhaliwal, Haley Stanko, and Caroline FitzGerald
With Lydia Hatfield: Dolphin School explores support for solidarity economy agents in Mexico.
With Lydia Hatfield: Dolphin School explores support for solidarity economy agents in Mexico
Lydia brought three people from the Solidarity Economy of Mexico: Pablo Correa, from La Coperacha, a cooperative of journalists based in Mexico City that focus specifically on social and solidarity economies, defense of the environment, food sovereignty, and community life; Celina Valadez, coordinator and founder of the solidarity economy network of Mexico, and Ari Sahagún, an organizer with the Gringo Solidarity Tax Fund as well as a writer and researcher of the solidarity economy. Simultaneous Spanish-English interpretation was provided by the CUNY School of Law.
You can watch the full Dolphin School session here directly from Mexico, with interpreting from English to Spanish!
And you can read more here: Lydia Hatfield_blog post.pdf
With Joty Dhaliwal, a deep dive into land trusts with an invitation to rethink and rearrange rights and responsibilities to land.
Joty brought together members of the Aboriginal Housing Management Association in British Columbia, Canada as well as US-based community land trust (CLT) organizers. Her presentation described how CLTs can be understood as an invitation to rethink and rearrange rights and responsibilities to land. In the “classic CLT model” that originated in the United States, one division and arrangement of rights and responsibilities was defined along the lines of the ownership of different titles, one entity holding the title to the land and another to the buildings built on the land. However, Joty’s work describes how ownership is not the only framework for discerning rights and responsibilities and how an answer to what else could be possible lies within the solidarity economy movement and Indigenous relationships to land. Her presentation also described the possibility of integrating healing justice, generative conflict, and Asset-Based Community Development organizing practices within the CLT, in order for CLTs to be better situated in supporting social and political transformation, aka revolution.
Link to an article on this work as well as the recorded presentation here.
With Haley Stanko, we explored using conflict mediation in established firms
Haley used the Dolphin School to present her ideas around how she can bring her practice as a volunteer mediator for a local mediation center into her workplace. Her role as a Lean Coach in continuous improvement in a manufacturing plant puts her in a position to be aware of many conflicts employees run into in their work – often with other employees who disagree about how work should be done. Her pitch was to transform the culture around conflict by supporting employees in adult-adult dialogue to resolve conflict using transformative mediation practices. This is a shift from our current culture that promotes immediately bringing any and all conflicts to management for a resolution in a win-lose dynamic.
After the Dolphin School presentation she ran through the presentation with her boss. He was happy with the direction Haely was going and gave her encouragement to continue. She will also run through the presentation again in a few months for one of their volunteer mediators’ Lunch and Learns to get even more feedback from fellow mentors. The Dolphin School was a great experience! In reflection, Stanko shared this:
“I really enjoyed getting to pull in people who know me in different contexts to hear about what I’m working on. The feedback my guests and classmates gave helped me shift the way I was thinking about implementing – it really clarified for me the need to build from the bottom up instead of trying to instill a program from the top down. When it comes to how we handle conflict, it will have to be experienced before it can be named. At first I was thinking we would have this big program and all this training to intentionally shift the way we approach conflict, but after the Dolphin School I felt really validated in the confirmation that it made more sense to go about it by taking smaller opportunities to practice mediation at work and use the experiences of the people who participate to inform any formal program.”
Caroline FitzGerald presented Women’s Sports Rally
At the end of the term, Caroline FitzGerald, a student in CUNY SLU’s Workplace Democracy and Community Ownership Certificate program, was invited to appear on The Kelly Clarkson Show to talk about her organization, Women’s Sports Rally (WSR). WSR is a social and civic club for women’s sports fans to celebrate their shared passion and build a powerful community.
Embracing cooperative practices, Caroline has prioritized relationship-building and collaboration with other leaders and organizers in the women’s sports space. That approach paid off when The Kelly Clarkson Show called: she needed a photo for the segment—along with signed media release forms from every person in it.
Although Caroline had hundreds of photos from WSR gatherings, she didn’t have contact information for everyone pictured. Racking her brain, she remembered a February retreat for women’s sports Community Organizers she had co-hosted with the Working Families Party. The attendees had stayed in touch through a group chat affectionately named the “Women’s Sports Justice League.”
The retreat had produced some fantastic group photos that truly captured the spirit of WSR. A quick message to the chat was all it took—within 24 hours, ten media release forms were signed and submitted.
This moment reflects the relationship-oriented mindset Caroline believes is fundamental to cooperative-based practices.
“While the value of relationships has always been at the heart of many social change efforts, it’s not easy to put these values into action in a system that prizes transactional outcomes. But it’s undoubtedly worth it—not just for the initiative you’re working on, but for your own soul. Kelly Clarkson was an absolute gem, but when I reflect on the experience, the thing I’m most grateful for is the folks in that photo that made it possible.
See more coverage of WSR here from NYGroove!
We invite folks to join WSR substack here https://wsrally.substack.com/
And see the dolphin school sessions here:
Women Sports Rally Dolphin School pt 1 & WSR Dolphins #2
