Let's See Labs

I am the founder, producer, and director at Let’s See Labs, an organization researching, experimenting, and discovering how self-realization impacts divisive social issues.

As a cultivator of community for culture leaders on a self-realization journey and a conduit for shining light upon their stories, Let’s See Labs brings them to life through production of film, live forums, and relational discovery platforms. 

My creative storytelling is propelled by curiosity around what emerges at the interchange of self-realization, social issues, and the mystery of the unknown. I'm driven by how through vulnerable stories, we learn through example how to activate paths to wholeness and that humanity has the power to source peace from within.

CHALLENGE: The world’s unrest is fueled by the unrest within individuals. This offers us a window to view how and where we can personally make a difference. But how? We can learn from 1) direct examples and 2) the resilience of supportive communities. 

Traditional activist platforms often advocate that 'other' people are the source of an issue and advocate for externalized change in others, whereas Let's See Labs approach is celebrating leadership that's demonstrating the embodiment of one's values through every direct action.

PROJECT: We are addressing societal concerns through 1) producing real film stories of self-realization, and 2) building an interactive reflection platform and community builder that serves the interdependent & participatory evolution of self-realization through these film stories. 

SOLVING: We are addressing global conflict through illuminating captivating examples that the most effective and lasting way to a peaceful and loving society is through sourcing it from within ourselves.

CHALLENGE: The source of divisions in our society is based upon an unrealized inherent self-worth and self-love within individuals. It's often our societal systems, media, and cultural norms that we, often subconsciously, adopt as ways of being that continue to reinforce cycles of inferiority/superiority, us/them, or blame-centered thinking. To get to the deepest sources to penetrate these loops, it’s critical we don’t disregard these realities. Yet in pursuit of collective liberation and the alleviation of suffering, we must also realize our own inherent worth in order to create lasting shifts.

Working with the two basic approaches of self-realization and addressing systemic barriers allows: 

+Liberation to arise from an intrinsic place that irreversibly shifts the way individuals engage with themselves and with structures of society;

+Dismantling of disproportionate allocations of opportunity and access embedded in the structures that facilitate movement based upon socialized identities.

Working to dismantle the external structures is not sufficient enough to alleviate the suffering activated throughout humanity and earth. We must include an internal, transformative, restorative, and self-realizing process that includes EVERYONE.

Communities we've worked with include: women's prisons, Israeli/Palestinian nonviolence center, homelessness, genocide reconciliation in Rwanda, reformed extremists, and many more.

Through storytelling, interactive forums, and collective vulnerability, our work broadens the scope of understanding across cultural identities related to it's various facets, including but not limited to race, religion, gender, socio-economic status, politics, addiction, genocide, homelessness, prison reform, extremism, and other areas where cultural tensions emerge.

Our virtual and physical community represents people doing inner work as source from which to ignite change throughout culture, politics, and our social fabric. 

Aspects of the platform include:

• Films serve as conversation starters and permissioning pathways, launching self-realization as the orienting focus

• Films serve as exemplified leadership models, illuminating the entangled relationship between freedom and responsibility

• User participation demonstrates the interdependence of our societal narratives as well as our collective pathways to truth and reconciliation 

• A way to organize interactivity to see how we are reflections of each other, shattering the hero/villain myth through being willing to engage with complexity

• A learning community around how to source and grapple with trauma, building empathy through restorative justice approaches

Capturing content in a way that integrates with modern social media landscape will concurrently convene our global community into expanded awareness of pioneering ways to deal with social issues.

A few examples of films include: 

• What contributions do self-reckoning and personal responsibility play in addressing the complexities of Israeli Palestinian tensions? In this film story, Hanan shares his experience of learning to humanize those he previously saw as enemies. 
• What does it look like to welcome everything? What holds us back from accepting our own wholeness? While reckoning with prison life, Debb helps us see how our own honesty permissions others to also be honest despite fear of consequence. 
• How can we derive the power to choose alternate paths than revenge, when we've been extremely hurt by others? Hyppolite shares his pathway to forgiving those who killed his family in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Our films are used as transformative tools in film + dialogue events. Examples of community participants include: 

• NGOs and organizations started and run by the Feel Leaders exemplified in the films 

• People inspired to learn about how they can directly contribute to conflict resolution by starting within their own hearts 

• Companies with value-aligned missions who want to engage with high standard in responsible social impact 

• Activists who are centered upon nonviolent direct action, seeking to learn in a community of accountability

Our films serve as participatory reflection tools in community. We elevate interpersonal understanding through collective vulnerability.

PERSPECTIVE shifts to empathetic centered relating from trauma, blame, and/or avoidance and from dualism to complexity

BELIEFS show faith in capacity to live with self-realizing orientations and how we can be the active agent in our own liberation

BEHAVIORS exemplify process of sourcing change from within, where each action/community embodies those values

WILLINGNESS of each participant to take responsibility for role in conflict/s

We elevate opportunities by offering platforms and film stories for unheard voices to be deeply considered in reflective dialogue.

This project is an emergent property of my own realization. Propelled by a mix of suffering and deep inner calling, I have explored all sort of consciousness expansion modalities. This includes learning subtle energy techniques, neurolinguistic programming, meditation, and much more. While gaining bits and pieces of deep wisdom from each experiment, it wasn't until I started deconstructing my own SOCIALIZED identity (often activated in relational exchanges) that I found the most liberation.

For example, I began to learn how subconsciously taking on the role of a white person in society gives me subtle ways of making myself superior to others without knowing it. And my gender conformity offers me ways of making myself inferior to others without knowing it. By breaking down into nuances the specificity of where I've adopted both oppressor and victim archetypes, I can learn to take full accountability for stepping into my own wholeness and therefore seeing others in their wholeness. Within community, I pursued these and other deconstructions of my cultural identity, I realized how profoundly effective it was for sourcing internal liberation that immediately ripples into the potential liberation of others within relational exchanges. My idea was born out of this personal success.

I feel called to shine a light on what inspires me, rather than highlight something that needs 'fixing.' Therefore, I began to research and find people across socialized identity categories like race, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, politics, and so much more who had successfully shifted into a self-realizing orientation. I asked them to share their journey of finding their worth beyond identity constructs. My hypothesis remains that by assembling a collection of these stories across multiple global social issues, a pattern can be seen that we can source peace, love, and liberation from within our own hearts, minds, and bodies. 

My personal connection is to human realization and the embodiment of love. I'm committed to seeing patterns across various societal tensions and locating the stories that show the power of the human heart to find resilience within their inner love. I'm committed to delicately listening and sharing beautifully crafted stories and then facilitating virtual and physical film dialogue events for people to share in collective vulnerability and learn their worth beyond trauma and identity within the interdependence of conscious community. My commitment is to WALK THE TALK and allow every story to break my heart open into further personal realization.

I'm well positioned to deliver this project because I spent years digging inward to discover the unique gift I could bring the world. This work is the evolving passion of my soul's work on earth. I have found nothing worth pursuing other than collective liberation sparked through inductive inspiration. 

I'm dedicated to relationship building, cultivating community of shared values, respectful collaboration, and creating polished work with bold impact. 

My experience in authentic relating facilitating gives me a foundational capacity to approach relational dynamics through vulnerability and honesty. This work requires me to show up with the same depth of empathy of which I am asking others to share in their stories, and this one way my own transformation and growth is beautifully entangles with the evolution of the work. 

I have an innate draw to reach out to people from all walks of life and listen to them. I've built an international network and will continue to expand it so the Let's See Labs community, films, and workshop offerings will offer unprecedented restorative solutions across multicultural contexts. 

This past fall I organized a film shoot in Rwanda with interviews from both perpetrators and survivors from the 1994 genocide sharing stories of reconciliation and forgiveness. The process of getting approval for the project locally in Rwanda with NGOs, US Embassy of Rwanda, and other bureaucratic systems was extensive. After months of navigating relationships and processes, I got full permissions to film, inclusive of within genocide memorials. A friend offered to do the cinematography work. Everything seemed to be coming together. When we got to Kigali, however, my friend who came to shoot apparently wasn't emotionally prepared to be working directly with genocide testimonials. He abandoned the project right in the middle of it. I had to work with immediacy, compassion, and resilience to find local videographers and organize ways to make the rest of the project happen. In realtime, it was tough to have someone abandon the project when a whole team of Rwandans I had assembled were ready to go. Finding my own resilience and tending delicately to the reality of the moment allowed the project to continue. Now we have a short documentary that was selected to screen at the Global Impact Film Festival August 2020.

In 2019, I brought together a reformed jihadist, a cancer survivor, a victim of child abuse, and a reformed gang member and generated a live-streamed participatory panel event. Having never done such a thing, I was led by my faith in myself and deep attunement to the present moment.

The event reviews reflected an exciting success, engagement was high, and we crafted the footage into a 15 minute film experience to demonstrate the patterns in each of the participant's stories. By taking this risk and initiative, it launched the official journey of Let's See Labs-- which is now producing series of self-realization films across even more social issues. 

I take initiative, build relationships, and respect boundaries. 

[Watch the event film here: https://www.letsseelabs.com/work/the-role-of-self-realization-in-societal-change]

Right now Let's See Labs is filed as an LLC. My goal is to craft it into a hybrid for-profit and non-profit that serves as a social enterprise model. This seeks to generate a sustainable way to use business as a force for good. This delineates between those we serve to offer no need for financial transaction (ie. refugee camps, nonprofits, etc.) and those we serve who are able to engage with monetary transactions (sponsors, for-profit business partners, media platforms, etc.). 

This work innovates upon change itself. Elevation of humanity happens when change becomes transformation because it is both irreversible as well as grounded in an expanded awareness. Therefore, this work explores the deepest sources of where we each can access love within ourselves, then bringing that into relationships and the world at large. The films and workshop platforms offer openings to unforeseen possibilities, setting examples that continue to ripple from human to human, demonstrating how and what the power of the human spirit can accomplish when we step into a self-realization process together. 

Countless times we hear enlightened thought leaders suggesting that all we seek is within us, therefore when we find love inside, the external experience reflects this reality.  To begin to embody this, it involves asking questions about the truth of our innate worth as humans here on earth, including the not-so-welcome questions that threaten our very identity.

Looking deeper at the source of what’s driving the dualistic divide, it leads to unresolved tension inside individuals. When, where, why, and how are we aware of what’s happening inside of us? When we don’t feel our innate worth, or deserving of love, or when we feel a sense of isolation from this love, we often seek ways to have these subconscious needs met. The progression can unfold into choosing extremists mentalities. This often leads to identification with an external concept, like a cult, religion, or political perspective, rather than being grounded in one’s own sense of self from an intrinsic place. 

We are illuminating the journeys of individuals who have transformed from a blame-centered mentality to one in which they learn how to love themselves and others. This is touching areas across prison reform, homelessness, genocide, sexuality, war, drug addiction, mental healthy, ethnicity, colonization, and more.

Each story focuses on a varied identity complex, yet when the stories are demonstrated in aggregate, it becomes clear that the source of tension behind social constructs is essentially the same: each individual has not realized their self-worth.

Perceptual shifts open through exemplifying authentic examples of how humans don’t have to live a life of hate or blame, and to see that our innate worth is not dependent upon any race, religion, gender, political perspective, socio-economic status, nationality, or any other socially constructed identity.

These sequential three charts demonstrate the path of transformative change across divided social issues:

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We host physical and virtual film + dialogue events, in which we can host anywhere between 30 to 100 people per event, possibly more. Right now we do a couple per year and plan to host more, as project funding allows. In addition, our films are used as tools within our community partners. Our work continues to ripple out and we measure impact through filming the dialogues and then crafting films that show the films as permissioning tools into collective vulnerability. The hope is the workshops, events, and films can reach an expanding number of people year over year. View our Impact Series: https://www.letsseelabs.com/impact

Currently, we have a community of 16k people on Facebook and also our communities are growing on other social platforms. This allows these people to have direct exposure to our work through modern social landscape.

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I would like to build our participatory storytelling experiences as both an online and physical community that hosts the global standard in nonviolent direct action, oriented in self-realization, and embedded with trauma-informed approaches. This is how we will scale to reach more people across the world.

I plan to do this by continuing to craft film stories that showcase self-realizing and nonviolent leaders, leveraging their stories as tools for reflective dialogue, measuring the impact, and cultivating value-aligned partnerships across many social conscious organizations. 

Example: We are now working to explore how we can leverage the film we made about genocide forgiveness in Rwanda to launch a workshop on self-realization and forgiveness in a Syrian refugee camp. We will then film that event and show how global communities can learn from each other through reflective and vulnerable story sharing.

Financial: sustained film production costs, infrastructure and sustaining of virtual website that hosts the community, and other operational costs

Technical: a way to funnel people into the site to ‘join’ officially, a way for users to interact with the films and the content, way for users to upload their own video/text responses in specific responses to the stories, way for the user-uploads to follow threads, but not get ‘lost’, pattern recognition built into the content, user flow oriented around usability (of course) and also feelings of vulnerability and permission. How can technology be invitational and generate inductive prompts of self reflection? 

Legal: to ensure consent forms for all story participants, even the ones who upload user-generated content, preventative protection when working in high-tension topics (ie. potentially saying something 'against' someones view who then decides to sue)

Cultural: working across social identities is extremely challenging and requires major sensitivity, understanding, humility, and resilience. This is doable and what I like to do. How can we expand the scope of what we're able to value across global identities?

Market: there is currently not a thriving marker for truth, reconciliation, and self-realization in general, this is a barrier that needs dissolving. How can a social enterprise model be used to pursue self-realization and the awakening of human wholeness through events, storytelling, and collective vulnerability platforms?

I plan to overcome these barriers by tackling them one by one. More barriers will arise because the process of change is not a destination, rather a continual stepping into the unknown. I plan to continue to effectively use the resources available at each moment and revise the reality of the situation periodically. Examples: Technical and legal barriers: I plan to get skillful specialized help with someone who is expert in that domain. Cultural barriers: requires self-aware and diverse participation-- the network, advisory, resources, and guidance from the Elevate Prize community would serve the continual dissolution of these barriers. Market barrier: this is something that will require creative attention to crafting and customizing services in ways that support the unique contexts of beneficiaries and customers within the social enterprise model.. it will also call for more advanced marketing solutions that communicate value propositions in scalable and culturally sensitive ways.

A few examples of Let's See Labs partners are listed below. We craft films of the Feel Leaders in these organization, allowing their message to be embodied in a story. The films are then used to further their missions, tools for workshops, and bring people together in common values.

Roots Organization: Fostering a grassroots movement of understanding, nonviolence, and transformation among Israelis and Palestinians.

Movements4Movements: We believe by using our universal language of dance and movement, we can dissipate social, cultural, and economic barriers.

Authentic Relating International: Offers life-changing courses that empower you to be more alive, awake and aware in all your relationships – with self, other, and the world.

Be The Peace: Rwandan non-profit that works to halt the intergenerational transmission of hate.

Light Upon Light: dedicated to working to promote a paradigm shift in human consciousness, in order to attack the problem of polarization, hate, and extremism at a high level of spiritual conscience.

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CUSTOMERS:

• Sponsors within physical & virtual community with aligned missions (potential membership model)
• Partners of for-profit, social enterprises, corporations, and b-corps we offer workshops/events/collaborations
• Corporations desiring self-realizing ways to advance organizational culture and/or desire to build externalized film campaigns (delivering workshops/film+dialogue events)
• Possibilities: film and/or workshop format licensing, customized film stories

BENEFICIARIES: 

• Organizations of our network participants and features in stories (the services built from the mission work of the people in the film stories)
• Workshops delivered to nonprofits and/or struggling areas (ie. post-conflict, incarceration, etc.)
• Characters, families, and communities that are elevated through the stories/films 

Very rough estimates for what this could look like:

• 50% paid customer partners - for LSL workshops/events/collaborations
• 20% paid customer partners - for customized versions of LSL workshops/events/collaborations and films
• 20% sponsorship through physical & virtual community network
• 10% film content licensing

We have been fortunate to receive one investment from a private donor thus far. We are currently pursuing additional pathways of support, such as The Elevate Prize, to help support the on-going operations and visioning as well as help to build out the revenue generation aspect of the model so this global solution becomes sustainable in it's own revenue flow.

We are looking for advisory guidance in the process of identifying potential opportunities for value-aligned funding options. The strategy is to use funding such as grants and donations as transitional support in the pathway to a financially sustainable self-reliance model for the entire Let's See Labs ecosystem. 

One primary reason I am struck by the Elevate Prize is due to the focus on changing the way we engage with change itself. Humans have been pursuing traditional ways of attempting to change the world for centuries, while we continue to see the same patterns cycle of conflict, disease, and injustice. I'm grateful to find an organization that is interested in innovating upon the foundational nature of change so we can experiment with expanded ways to elevate our human family. In addition, I feel the rigor, accountability, and standard of the MIT Solve ecosystem, offering the Elevate Prize, holds a balance of empathy, professionalism, and practicality. I feel this approach is able to actually make a tangible difference. Feeling value alignment and support from such a credible organization is invaluable while seeking to build out new and innovative models to serve our society.  

Funding and revenue model: we've generated a Social Enterprise Canvas Model (as depicted in previous part of this application), however getting support from experienced people as to the practicality, possibilities, and creative ways this could be structured will be extremely vital. 

Board members/advisors: as we engage with building a global network of nonviolent activists through storytelling, we'll need a very diverse set of minds and hearts to help guide the way. Part of this rests in needed sound guidance for transactional matters, yet also very much involves critical attention to cultural sensitivity and worldview literacy. 

Marketing, media, exposure: we have engaging content, yet are limited in our platforms and reach. Building out smart, scalable, and impactful marketing campaigns and learning how to establish a platform for the work to garner visibility and demonstrate the value is essential. We need help with this.

I'd like to partner with:

• Nonviolent centers around the world, NGOs, United Nations, Amnesty International, other orgs that advocate for restorative peace 
• Trauma-informed centers who engage directly with social issues on the ground 
• Technology companies that could help with tech implementation 
• Any firms or organizations to help with visibility and marketing
• Relevant film communities that leverage film for social change 
• Media distribution platforms such as Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and others to showcase these stories on a broader scale and help build awareness for the work, global network, and causes the stories support
• Value-aligned organizations who want to collaborate with either our services or creative projects 
• Sponsors for events, workshops, and film production 
• Academic and research institutes with shared values and pursuits 
• More!!