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- BLI announces a new Access Opportunity
- Barger Leadership Institute is moving!
- BLI Announces New Partnership with The London Idea
- Former Jet Blue CEO donates $10 million to Barger Leadership Institute
- BLI Hires a New Assistant Director
- BLI to Co-Host ‘Extreme by Design’ Film Screening, Discussion
- BLI awards Small Grant for Halfway Hijabi event
- BLI Launches New Capstone Experience
- BLI Launches New Fellows Program Structure
- Keep Calm and Lead On
- BLI Fellow Wins Wolverine Tank Pitch Contest
- BLI Congratulates Mya Haynes
- BLI Alumni Receive 2015-2016 Fulbright Honor
- The 2018 London Ideas Project is Announced
- Congrats to BLI partner Sandra Levitsky for being awarded the Golden Apple!
- Congrats to BLI Fellow and Peer Facilitator Elisabeth Benham
- Tales of Leadership: The Advanced Fellows Journey
- Welcome to the 2018 Capstone Cohort!
- BLI welcomes new director!
- BLI Across the Pond
- BLI Hosts Voting Guru Nancy Thomas
- Ram Mahalingam's award winning film to be screened at two film festivals.
- The Capstone Experience with the Migrant Education Initiative
- The Mindful Leader - Becoming an Engaged Leader
- A Weekend of Mindful Leadership
- Introducing the 2019 Capstone Teams
- The Peer Facilitator Experience
- Dinners with...
- BLI Students Start Small and Dream Big in Detroit
- From Freshman to Senior Year -- Four Years of Leadership Learning
- BLI Speaker Series: Food For Thought
- BLI Director, Ram Mahalingam featured in the Record
- Capstone Bootcamp 2019
- In a Distracted World, Solitude is Practice for Tomorrow’s Leaders
- A Conversation on Mindfulness, Bias and Racial Justice — a podcast with Ram Mahalingam
- The Mindful Leaders Retreat — Laying a Foundation
- Being a good leader is knowing when to practice gratitude
- Channeling Mindfulness
- Compassionate Leadership: Creating a Just, Inclusive and Mindful Society with Mirabai Bush
- Dinners With...
- Announcing Capstone 2020 Teams!
- Meet our 2020 Leadership Lab Teams!
- Leading Mindfully
- A Senior's Reflection on Peer Facilitating
- Expect Challenges
- Reflecting Back and Looking Forward
- From Leadership Lab, to Peer Facilitator, to Program Assistant
- Project Healthy Schools Global
- Learning to be an Effective Leader
- Leading Life with Dignity: A Challenge of Our Time
- Pause, Reflect, and Create
- What's Happening in the Lab?
- Capstone 3D Virtual Gallery
- Announcing the Break Away Podcast!
- BLI Advanced Fellow featured in M-LEAD's Leadership Lens Series!
- Two BLI Advanced Fellows Receive the Renowned MLK Spirit Award
- Stand Against Asian Violence
- BLI Hosts Alumni Panel
- Announcing the BLI's 2021 Capstone Cohort
- BLI Offers COVID-19 Hardship Grants
- ALA 175: Foundations in Leadership
- The Peer Facilitator Leadership Experience
- What's Happening in the Lab
- Capstone Boot Camp 2021
- Mindful Leader Reflection
- Learning to Lead with Compassion: A Mindful Leadership Retreat
- Okanagan Charter
- Foundations in Leadership, a Peer Facilitator Perspective
- Heart-Centered Leadership with Rebecca Irby
- Announcing the 2022 Leadership Certificate Cohort!
- Welcome the 2021-22 Mindful Leader Fellowship cohort!
- BLI Peace Leadership Retreat in Detroit
- BLI director awarded the Harold R. Johnson Diversity Service Award
- Seithur Sanitation Initiative receives the MLK Spirit Award
- The Michigan Difference Student Leadership Awards
- Feedback is Love
- Deepening the Foundations for Equity and Renewal
- Creating Leaders – Being a Peer Facilitator at the BLI
- M-LEAD Leadership Lens Feature: Kaitlyn Colyer
- M-LEAD Leadership Lens Feature: Mya Harris
- What's Happening in the Lab
- The Leadership Certificate at the University of Michigan: Cohort 1
- Color of Care Reflection
- Mindful Leader Retreat Recap
- Social Transformation, a Passionate Community of Scholars
- The Michigan Difference Student Leadership Awards
- Break Away Podcast
- BLI Weekend in Detroit
- Leadership Lens with Olivia O'Connell
- Leadership Lens with Becky Woolf
- Leadership Philosophy Reflection
- Senior Reflection, Renuka Murthi
- Dignity and Well-being in the Workplace: A French Perspective
- BLI – Year One
- Teaching Leadership, a Senior Reflection
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Going into the BLI bootcamp, our team did not anticipate how much we would evolve over the course of the BLI Capstone program. At the beginning of our capstone summer, we were in the mindset to make progress with our work as quickly as possible. Our work with school health education in Bangladesh had just received several grants to expand our reach, and we were eager, maybe a bit too eager to make use of the opportunities before us. We made plans in great detail, how we would allocate funds, who we would partner with, how many students we wanted to reach with our funds. Everything seemed in place for another year of setting and achieving goals.
Bootcamp was in a way a much-needed re-set for our team. We had to confront and understand our reasoning on a much more intimate level than before. Through the discussions and activities, we began to ask ourselves “why” instead of only “how”. Why did we think we should partner with the Centre for Woman and Child Health? Why do we need to double the size of our program so suddenly? When we started asking “why” we began to realize that we had misplaced the value of our work in its numbers rather than its quality. Because of the Capstone program, we were able to renew our appreciation for the amount of thought that had went into our work prior to last summer.
When we began Project Healthy Schools Global in 2016, we spent nearly a year researching health education and the socio-economics of adolescent health in Bangladesh. We spoke with stakeholders, from researchers to students and parents. We conducted multiple literature searches and stakeholder maps to contextualize the need for school health education. Before our pilot, we spent another year developing our program with the input of faculty, physicians, education experts, and school teachers at the University of Michigan and Bangladesh.
Our conversations with BLI peers and mentors made us realize that our work succeeded because of and not in spite of our meticulous, and sometimes painstaking, attention to detail. The amount of deliberation we put into our work made our program stand apart from similar programs that were unable to have as much of an impact. Most importantly, the additional time we dedicated to our work had ensured that we prioritized the needs of the communities we worked with. By asking more questions and collecting more input, our work was embedded in the voice of the community rather than assumptions drawn solely from academia. Community ownership, in turn, improved sustainability as the students and teachers we worked with championed our work in spite of challenges from a military crackdown on student protestors in 2018 to school closings because of an unanticipated dengue epidemic last summer.
The Capstone program at the Barger Leadership Institute, from bootcamp to research to the showcase, has been an invaluable experience in re-examining and re-defining the work we do. Today, because of the Capstone experience, our team continues to move forward but with more clarity and a resolve to continue prioritizing our community at every step of the way.