Cultivating
Kinship
A relational practice series exploring presence, play, and & generosity—in community.
October 8
Through December 17, 2026
Hosted by Shilpa Jain
Shilpa has spent decades exploring and cultivating cultures of relationship, community, and regenerative futures.
Cultivating Kinship is a translocal learning Lab designed to deepen our kinship ties. Each 3-week cycle explores a foundational theme—presence, play and generosity—with a combination of inspiration, reflection, personal learning, and collective effort.
Together, we’ll explore simple but meaningful relational practices that can strengthen our connection with friends, collaborators, neighbors, and other community members. Rather than simply learning these tools conceptually, we’ll experiment with them in our existing relationships and seed new practice grounds.
The experience combines online learning with local practice. We’ll gather online to explore kinship themes and a variety of relational approaches. Participants can also collaborate through Kinship Pods of 3–8 people (organized by geographical region) to deepen and integrate further.
Throughout the series, we'll be joined by wisdom tenders, storytellers, and facilitators who will guide us in developing a culture of kinship.
Michael Meade
Pat McCabe
Konda Mason
Orland Bishop
We live in a time when many of us long for deeper relationships, stronger communities, and ways of being together that remind of us our shared humanity. Yet few of us were ever taught how to intentionally cultivate communal ties. Cultivating Kinship offers simple relational tools and a community of practice to help us grow our capacities and deepen our relational safety nets.
Opening Session with Michael Meade
Here’s a taste of what we’re exploring in Cultivating Kinship:
Throughout the series, our guest speakers will explore broader questions of kinship with us, including…
✧ Why have kinship ties fractured in our communities and cultures?
✧ What helps communities heal and cultivate kinship?
✧ Why is cultivating kinship essential in times of ecological, social, and cultural transition?
These conversations provide the larger context for why we’re gathering. Each cycle invites us to live into the answers to these questions through ways of relating that cultivate our capacity for kinship.
Each 3-week cycle focuses on a key theme…
…and come to life through relational practices
→ Appreciative Inquiry
Practice transforming the questions we ask to shift our relationships into more rooted and rich terrain—and give us fresh eyes with which to find kinship everywhere.
→ Listening without JIFF-ing
Through story-based and body-based exercises, this kind of listening (without Judging, Interpreting, Fixing or Freezing) opens up profound connections and freedom with others and with yourself.
→ Personal & Collective Co-creation
Explore how even the smallest forays into our personal and collective creativity bring the delight and empowerment that lives in the heart of kinship.
→ Infinite Games
Playing games without winners, losers or anyone getting “out” not only nurtures our inner children, but gives us an embodied experience of dynamic growth and true belonging. And there's laughter. That's vital for everything!
→ Small Group Support System
Nature is generous, and it's in our natures to be generous. We'll practice giving and receiving support to recognize the power of reciprocity and mutuality as inherent to all kinship systems.
→ Appreciation Ceremony
An attitude of gratitude opens our hearts to each other and ties us together in appreciation. With inspiration from the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address, we'll explore and share our own Gratitude Poems and engage in a simple completion ceremony.
This series may be especially meaningful for…
⊹ Collaborators and teams who want stronger foundations of trust and relationality
⊹ Friends and family members seeking greater depth and connection
⊹ Neighbors and community members interested in cultivating local resilience
⊹ Facilitators and leaders seeking relational tools to offer in their communities
⊹ Anyone longing for relationships that move beyond surface-level conversation and toward more meaningful connection
Cultivating Kinship unfolds across three interconnected layers.
Reflect
Prompts and practices invite you to bring each theme into your own life and relationships.
Practice Together
Join others in your region when possible—or in a virtual pod—to experiment with the practices.
Cross Pollinate
Online sessions connect you with kin beyond your pod through randomized breakout groups.
You are welcome to participate even without a local Kinship Pod—and bring these ideas and practices into your own community or organization in ways that feel meaningful to you.
The Journey
3× Three-week Themed Cycles
Week One
Gather together online and with our guest Wisdom Tender to explore the cycle's theme.
Week Two
Choose from one of two identical live practice sessions, offered at different times to accommodate time zones.
Week Three
Meet with your Kinship Pod to practice in community
Theme One: Presence & Curiosity
Opening Session
We’ll open our container by sharing introductions, building agreements, and connecting. Special guest Michael Meade will share reflections about presence and curiosity as part of cultivating kinship.
Practice Sessions
Learn and experiment with practices such as Zones of Awareness, Listening without JIFF-ing, and Appreciative Inquiry. Participants will be placed in randomized breakout groups to engage together.
Pod Meeting Week
No whole group session, giving your pod time to self-organize your first meeting in person or online to practice together.
Theme Two: Play & Creativity
Play & Creativity
We’ll open our second cycle with Pat McCabe, Woman Stands Shining, to explore how play and creativity are essential elements to kinship ties and cultural thrival (not just survival)
Practice Sessions
Learn and engage with practices such as infinite games and personal and collective co-creation.
Pod Meeting Week
Use the ‘Play & Creativity’ practices to connect and deepen with your pod.
Theme Three: Generosity & Gratitude
Generosity & Gratitude
We’ll explore the theme of Generosity and Gratitude with our special guest, Konda Mason, who embodies this essential aspect of kinship in her spiritual practice, land stewardship, and transformative community-rooted activism.
Week of November 23 | No Sessions
Practice Sessions
Learn and try on practices that feed the reciprocal and mutual flow of giving and receiving, such as Small Group Support System and that daylight appreciation and gratefulness as ways of being together through an Appreciation Ceremony.
Pod Meeting Week
Use the ‘Generosity & Gratitude’ practices to connect and deepen with your pod.
Closing Session
We’ll reflect on our experience of the themes, practices and pod experimentation in small groups and the large group. We’ll also have Orland Bishop with us to help us close out with reflections on kinship.
***All Sessions will be recorded and recordings will be available to registered participants within 48 hours.
The Kinvene Experience
Cultivating Kinship is co-hosted and produced by Kinvene. Here’s what that means for you:
→ An integrated program experience designed for connection and meaning
→ A dedicated portal with program information, a Community Forum, and recordings
→ Kinship Pod organizing and support throughout the series
→ Friendly go-to support should you need any help along the way
Join us in Cultivating Kinship
Suggested Registration $100
Your registration helps us create and hold the container. Near the end of the series, we’ll invite you to offer an additional gift based on the value of your experience.
Choose the amount that works for you:
$25 · $50 · $75 · $100+
Sliding-scale codes are available at checkout.
Registration closes October 14
Once you register we’ll collect info to organize your Kinship Pod.
Meet Your Hosts & Guides
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Shilpa Jain is a facilitator, learning activist, and community weaver whose work explores the intersection of internal, interpersonal, and systemic change. For more than 11 years, she served as Executive Director of YES!, supporting social changemakers around the world to cultivate more thriving, just, and balanced ways of being and working together.
Shilpa has facilitated transformative gatherings with leaders from more than 50 countries and has written and co-authored numerous publications on learning, gift culture, ecology, and social change, including the facilitation manual Connect. Inspire. Collaborate. Her work draws on simple human and relational technologies that help people deepen connection, unlearn dominant patterns, and live in greater alignment with their values, communities, and the natural world. Read some of Shilpa’s reflections on her Substack.
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Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human. Learn more at patmccabe.net.
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Konda Mason is a social entrepreneur, earth and social justice activist, and dharma teacher whose work sits at the intersection of land, race, money, spirit, and transformative change. She is the founder and President of Jubilee Justice, which works to advance climate-resilient farming, economic equity, and land stewardship in Black farming communities in the rural South, while also convening transformational learning journeys across race and class.
A longtime leader in restorative economics and community transformation, Konda has co-founded and led numerous initiatives supporting socially engaged entrepreneurs and changemakers. She teaches meditation and retreats at Spirit Rock, East Bay Meditation Center, and other centers. Across her work, Konda brings together contemplative practice, social justice, and systems change in service of more just and regenerative ways of living together.
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Orland Bishop combines a deep dedication to human rights advocacy and cultural renewal with an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology and indigenous cosmologies. He was a research fellow with the Center for the Study of Violence and Social Change at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and has consulted with many human development organizations. Her is director of Shade Tree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, which reaches into gang and drug cultures where many young people expect to die before the age of 20. He has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentoring at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge.
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Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller and author who combines hypnotic storytelling, street-savvy perceptiveness, and spellbinding interpretations of ancient myths. He has a unique ability to tap ancestral sources of wisdom and connect them in illuminating and healing ways to the dilemmas we face and the stories we are living today.
Michael is the creator of the Living Myth Podcast, a highly regarded weekly podcast that goes out to a diverse and growing audience spanning over 150 countries. He is the author of The Heart of Transformation, Awakening the Soul, The Genius Myth, Fate and Destiny, Why the World Doesn’t End and The Water of Life. Michael is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose projects bring the medicine of myth and story to the issues that trouble both culture and nature in ways that inspire creative imagination and genuine hope.
Reciprocity & the Gift Economy
We want this experience to be financially accessible to a wide range of community members, while still honoring the time, care, and resources that go into creating it.
Your registration helps us create and hold the container, including:
Kinvene’s platform, production, pod organizing and participant support
Our time and care facilitating the series and designing the experience
Honorariums for our guest speakers and facilitators
We also offer Cultivating Kinship within the spirit of the Gift Economy. Near the end of our journey, we’ll share transparently about the resources that have gone into the program and invite you to offer an additional gift based on the value the experience has held for you.
Your registration helps make the container possible. Your later gift is an opportunity to honor the value of your experience.
No amount is too big or too small. Our hope is that reciprocity becomes another way we practice kinship together.
Frequently asked questions
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We meet in 3-week cycles as follows:
Week one: Thursday from 11am-1pm PT / 2-4pm ETWeek two: Tuesday from 8-10am PT / 11am-1pm ET AND Thursday from 4-6pm PT / 7-9pm ET
Week three: Pods meet on their own
Start Date: October 8, 2026
End Date: December 17, 2026All sessions will be recorded and recordings will be available to registered participants within 48-hours of each live session.
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Yes, all live online sessions will be hosted on Zoom and will be recorded. All registered participants will have access to a portal that will house audio and video recordings, transcripts and other program information.
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Participants can join with others in their local region, or we’ll help participants join a kinship pod: small groups of 3-8 people. In localities with 3+ participants, local kin groups will be encouraged.
If no local pod exists, we will support participants in joining online kin groups based on geography/time zone or affinity.
If there is anyone in your local community that you want to go through this course with, we encourage you to join together.
Kinship pods will be encouraged to meet on the third week of each cycle and as much as they’d like throughout the journey.
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We will provide you with suggested agenda items, flows and prompts for your pod meetings.
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If $100 is beyond your means, reduced registration rates of $75, $50, and $25 are available at checkout — no application needed.
If you have greater financial capacity, you’re also welcome to contribute more to help make reduced rates possible for others.
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The Gift Economy invites us into a different relationship with resources — one rooted in generosity, trust, reciprocity, and care for the whole. Rather than assigning a fixed monetary value to the experience, we invite participants to reflect on what they have received and what they are able to give in return.
During Cultivating Kinship, we’ll explore this as part of our practice together. Near the end of the series, you’ll be invited to offer a gift based on the value of your experience and your own financial capacity. There is no required amount and no gift is too big or small.
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While being a part of Kinship Pod is a great way to practice embodying the concepts we explore, and a way to cultivating kinship with others, you do not have to join a Kinship Pod to be part of this program. You’re welcome to join the sessions, learn the practices and bring them into your life in whatever ways you’re called.
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Email support@kinvene.co for program support. We’ll direct your questions to the best person.
For a list of more FAQs about pods and more go here.
Testimonials from the Fierce Vulnerability Kinship Lab | Translocal Program
“My favorite part of the program was the the relational practice sessions and meeting in the pod.”
PJ, Participant“Our pod had someone with a lot of experience pulling the group together and understood the process. It was being in the group and relational practice sessions that I came to understand more about fierce vulnerability in practice.”
Participant“I really appreciated the relational practice sessions and how the focus was on slowing down.”
Erica, Participant“The relational practice sessions were very helpful to integrate and make personal sense of presentations and the ways of "being vulnerable.”
Doris, Participant