Elliot Washor's TGIF 10.31.2025

Are you with me now? A. J. Ryder

Taken from the Halloween display at our hotel in New Orleans

Hell I’d Go – The Hot Licks

For the past two days our Weavers group met in New Orleans, a city I love to visit. The Weavers group is facilitating work with all of BPL staff around the Impact Campaign. Prior to going to New Orleans I contacted Bobbie Hill and Steven Bingler who are the two principal architects of Concordia, a New Orleans based firm. More than 30 years ago, Steven and Bobbie helped us design The Met in Providence and in the interim, we have worked on quite a few school startups together. Being kindred spirits, they were delighted to have us use their space for a day. With this space secured, Anna asked me where we could have lunch and when I spoke with Bobbie, she immediately told me to have lunch at Cafe Reconcile right across the street from where the Concordia office is. What she didn’t tell me was one of the big surprises of the trip and I like surprises.

Turns out that Reconcile is no ordinary restaurant but a youth development organization much aligned to BPL practices. This is a place where youth can go and like its namesake says have a reconciliation of their own design. Youth work at the restaurant to gain skills in hospitality   and culinary but that is only a little part of the story. It turns out that what I didn’t know was that Sonn has known about Reconcile for quite a while since it is across the street from one of The Net School campuses. When I walked into Reconcile, I could immediately feel something was different but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Once we sat down to eat Sonn introduced us to Kheri Billy the CEO of Reconcile. She spent a good deal of time with us explaining what they do and then after we finished a wonderful lunch, Kheri took us on a tour of this four-story building and that put the icing on the cake. On every floor, youth had comfortable settings with caring adults who worked with them in all sorts of ways.

Reconcile is a great example of doing work with youth as a different kind of ‘community school’/center where youth have the support to figure out who they are in the world. This is one amazing place. Here’s a bit more in their words.

Reconcile Mission

Reconcile New Orleans is innovating how workforce training is delivered. Through transformative experiences in our café and community, we nurture confidence and foster growth for young people.

Reconcile Vision

We are building a future where all young people have access and opportunity to reach their unique potential and become positive forces in our community.

Reconcile Core Values

(C.A.R.E.) – Collaboration. Access. Respect. Excellence.

After our time at Reconcile we went across the street and visited The Net School where we met with an advisory putting together a group song while also studying the history of protest songs. The students’ presentations — and the music — were inspiring.

The Weaver’s agenda was chock full but at the same time it felt very relaxed in large part thanks to Wilson’s facilitation. He did a great job weaving levity and play into the serious nature of the work. For me, it was a breath of fresh air to actually be with a small group and not on Zoom. We came away with a greater understanding of the Impact Campaign for a bigger picture and equally important we came away with understanding one another through the personal stories we shared over meals.

One of the next stops on the Impact Campaign tour is our face-to-face staff meeting in December in Dallas. This work will dovetail with the planning of Big Bang in Dallas this summer. On a Zoom today, a group of us discussed scouting out Leaving to Learn's as part of our time in Dallas. For my part, I’m going to look for future LTL’s that involve repair i.e. watch, shoes, jewelry, pens, clothing, musical instruments, body and how these places and people develop serious relationships with the people who bring what is broken to them. I’m playing with something I’ve observed in places of repair for a long time - Fix the object or the problem fix the person. This is definitely too simplistic a way to state the repair work but it’ll do for now. Also, repair work is work that AI will have great difficulty replacing because a good part of the nature of repair is in the relationship both physical and emotional. 

During the week, I also had meetings around the International Big Picture Learning Credential; connected with Joe Youcha on the New Jersey 311/Harbor Freight Fellows grant as well as another proposal we are working on involving the marine trades.

In my catch up with Charlie on Harbor Freight Fellows, we continued our talk about the Industrial Maintenance Technician Residency that Crishell has successfully started in South Carolina and now we are bringing this to Los Angeles.

Finally, while I was in Boston, I had a wonderful meeting with Yemi Olorunnipa who works in the School of Public Health at Harvard about BPLiving. 

One more thing…

Here’s an article sent by Viv about one of BP Australia’s students presenting at the Inclusion Through Collaboration: Community of Practice event at NSW Parliament House.

“We are proud to share that Eliza, a Year 12 Big Picture graduate from our Blackwattle Bay Campus, was a featured speaker at the Inclusion Through Collaboration: Community of Practice event at NSW Parliament House on 22 October 2025. Earlier this year, served as 2025 Deputy Premier of the NSW Youth Parliament. Her work includes co-authoring the Needs Based Transition Program Bill and contributing to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Foundational Supports for Children and Young People with Disability in NSW. And, Finally, we would like to extend our congratulations to Eliza on her on her offer of unconditional entry to a Bachelor of Government at the University of Canberra for 2026.” Can anyone say IBPLC?

Next week, I’ll be in San Diego meeting with the Learn4Life folks, then in DC for a daylong session with Steven Farr and Daniel Oscar. Steve directs the Global Institute — a leadership initiative of Teach for All — and we’ll be exploring intersections with BPLC’s work.

From New Orleans to Dallas, South Carolina to Australia, the threads of our work continue to weave together — each one connecting stories of youth and community.

Hell I’d go again — in a heartbeat