Wycliffe Barsa is the co-founder and CEO of Kosi Africa, an ambassador for the Global Play Brigade, and a graduate of the East Side Institute’s flagship program, the International Class. Here he shares his journey from living on the streets as a child to his work today promoting and transforming education in Kenya, and, in the process, developing young leaders as visionaries who will return to their communities to help them generate new possibilities.

What makes Kosi different from most non-profits is, Barasa says, is sustainability. Instead of relying on outside money, when Kosi approaches a school, it does a Resource Audit, asking the school what sort of resources do you have and how can we work with you, the parents and the larger community, using those resources, to together solve these problems? “We’re not there to help the community; we’re there to work with the community,” he explains. Pointing out that in English “Kosi” means “Go” or “Keep Moving,” Barasa continues, “Development is how the whole community comes together to move and grow and create power.”

https://kosiafrica.org/

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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“Live theatre is a way to co-dream,” says Anthony Moseley, Chief Programming Officer and Artistic Director of Chicago’s Collaboraction theatre. “It can connect us at a really deep level that allows us to drop seeds of new emotions and new possibilities.” Moseley joins host Desire Wandan to discuss his artistic and political journey and the role that the multi-racial, multi-cultural theatre that he leads plays in not only bringing theatre to, but creating theatre with, the poor communities of Chicago.

Collaboraction, under Moseley's leadership, has devised hundreds of plays with young people and adults from Chicago’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods, plays that have been performed in parks and community centers across the city and cheered on by tens of thousands of audience members. Most of its performances are followed by a “crucial conversation” where the audience members engage with the issues raised by the play. Since the pandemic, Collaboraction has produced 150 digital pieces and the film adaptation of its play, Trail in the Delta: The Murder of Emmett Till won a Chicago/Midwest Emmy Award. Collaboraction is about to open its new cultural center “The House of Belonging” in Chicago’s Humbolt Park neighborhood.

“The company itself is a collaboration,” says Moseley, “a never-ending devised piece of theatre.”

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anthony@collaboraction.org | 773.230.9981

collaboraction.org

House of Belonging Capital Campaign

Winner of a 2022 Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement for Human Interest, Long Form, and 2023 Emmy Award for Outstanding Documentary for The Lost Story of Emmett Till: Trial in the Delta

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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Kathleen J. Guillaume-Delemar, President and CEO of the Center for Community Progress shares the work of the Center in helping communities across the country transform vacant lots and abandoned buildings into community parks, food co-ops, dignified affordable housing, and other vibrant examples of mutual aid and grassroots community power. Guillaume-Delemar, a first-generation Haitian-American who grew up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, during the crack epidemic, when vacant lots in her neighborhood were gathering places of desperation and despair. Describing herself as a “compassionate revolutionary” and an “unapologetic thorn in the side of society,” she is now leading efforts from Flint, Michigan, to Lafayette, Louisiana, to transform urban ruins into centers of community power and hope.

Kathleen's upcoming event is the National Land Bank Network Summit on September 8-9 in Detroit. Please click the link for more information. https://communityprogress.org/nlbn-summit-2025/

sign up for newsletter! https://communityprogress.org/newsletter-signup/

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Welcome to All Power to the Developing, a podcast of the East Side Institute. The Institute is a center for social change efforts that reinitiate human and community development. We support, connect, and partner with committed and creative activists, scholars, artists, helpers, and healers all over the world. In 2003, Institute co-founders Lois Holzman and the late Fred Newman had a paper published with the title “All Power to the Developing.” This phrase captures how vital it is for all people—no matter their age, circumstance, status, race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation—to grow, develop and transform emotionally, socially and intellectually if we are to have a shot at creating something positive out of the intense crises we’re all experiencing. We hope that this podcast series will show you that, far more than a slogan, “all power to the developing” is a loving activity, a pulsing heart in an all too cruel world.

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