Coral Crossland, Rockflower’s 2022 Summer Intern
This summer I worked as an intern at Rockflower, where I was able to support and learn alongside a team dedicated to improving the lives of women and girls around the world.
As I was exploring my different interests for summer internships, I discovered that a passion of mine is helping women and girls around the globe. I began researching many different organizations and nonprofits that shared this passion, and so, when I came across Rockflower, I was instantly intrigued. As I scrolled through the website I found I was more and more captivated by the terms and ideas being discussed. Rockflower seemed to have the answers to questions I had been asking myself - Do different nonprofits connect with each other? How do they receive funding? How do they grow from an idea to a fully functioning system?
So, though I was initially drawn in by the core objective of Rockflower, its goal to provide funding to women and girls on the global margins through investing early in community based organizations and social enterprises, I was really interested in Rockflower because of its unique approach to attaining this goal.
This summer at Rockflower I learned what this approach was. More specifically, I learned what the key concepts that Rockflower focused on were: the five keys, Radical Idealism, Practically Realized, the Currency of Mind and how to Cultivate the Garden with the Seed to Canopy model.
I was lucky enough to help create and attend the 2022 Partner Workshop series where each workshop was centered around one of the five keys. In each discussion, experts of each field would talk about their own experiences and barriers they’ve faced. Although each discussion was designed to be centered around a specific key, it became clear that this was nearly impossible and the importance of assessing the issues as a whole quickly became evident. I saw this during the Economic Empowerment Workshop when the discussion became about education, when the discussion on Maternal and Reproductive Health turned into a conversation about peace and security, or even when a line was drawn connecting the importance of access to water and food and economic empowerment. This was a recurring theme throughout the series and it seems impossible to limit the conversation to a single key.
This then ties in the importance of “Cultivating the Garden” with the Seed to Canopy Model. It is just as important to view the canopy as a whole, as it is to view each piece individually. One of my favorite things about this model is that it allows us to think of our different communities as all part of a singular garden, and reminds us that a garden reaches its full potential if it is tended to as a whole.
One of the things I first loved about Rockflower were its philosophies of Radical Idealism, Practically Realized and the Currency of Mind. My main takeaway from the summer is that if you have an idea, you should go ahead and do it. Rockflower is unique in its ability to view things broadly and as a connected web. This may seem like too large of a task, as it is tackling a multitude of issues all at once, but Rockflower is proof that this method works and that this viewpoint is not only possible but necessary. Experiencing these unique philosophies has allowed me to look at life through a much wider lens and to assess a vision as a whole, as well as analyze each part individually and then reflect on what the desired outcome should be. Rockflower taught me that these conclusions aren’t radical and crazy thoughts, but true solutions to issues that, if realized, could be made a reality.
To sum it all up, my time with Rockflower this summer taught me a lot about the complexities and barriers of accessing funding and gave me exposure to many different organizations and projects happening around the world. But, most importantly, my biggest takeaway this summer is the importance of the connectivity of people and ideas and to take a step back and view things as a larger system, rather than as individual moving parts.