vaplp@engageva.org
Application due Friday March 13
❁
Application due Friday March 13 ❁
About Our Program
What is the Virginia Progressive Leadership Program (VAPLP)?
The Virginia Progressive Leadership Program (VAPLP) is a no-cost, four-month experiential learning program for leaders who are Black, Indigenous, or part of the global majority and those with diverse lived experiences who aim to transform systems & culture to realize the Virginia we imagine. Centering progressive values and a liberatory framework, we don’t just imagine transformation—we practice it.
Our Values + Goals
In Virginia, we are experiencing the severe effects of racial injustice, violent repression, and health inequities, all within a context of attacks on democracy. Social and progressive political movements have reached new levels of power and reach, yet there are still barriers to civic participation for those who have been historically excluded, erased, and imprisoned. The tide is shifting for a wave of progressive leadership to build a new Virginia in the shell of the old.
Unlike many holistic leadership development programs in Virginia and elsewhere, VAPLP is focused on developing leadership to build social movement strategy. For us, this means facilitating a curriculum of liberatory leadership and intentional skill-building that seeks to challenge and grow Virginia’s emerging and enduring social justice leaders into a new generation of social change-makers. We invite you to join us, to enter your own chrysalis of change, and embrace a radical transformation of leadership and learning in community.
Our Model
Skill-Building Retreats
Four weekend-long retreats, once a month, from May-August, with 17 participants. Each retreat focuses on a specific asset of progressive leadership. We center relationships, drop the power dynamics, and engage in experiential workshops that grow your knowledge, skills, and network.
Access to Movement Leaders
Our facilitators are seasoned practitioners in social justice work. Each retreat you will meet and learn with two new facilitators, specialized in that retreat’s topic. After each retreat, you’ll have access to coaching office hours with two additional coaches with expertise in that retreat’s topic.
Who We Serve
Virginia Residency
VAPLP participants must all live or work in Virginia and have a commitment to building a more just Virginia. We understand the history of being the first colonized land in the US and the capital of the Confederacy. Carrying the torches of generations before us, we aim to better Virginia's future.
In advancing racial justice and collective liberation, there are many avenues towards social change. VAPLP honors the wide array of social change work that people engage in - community organizing, political campaigns, policy work, healing, cultural art, scholar-activism, and many more. We invite folks anywhere within the ecosystem to join the program.
Social Change Work
VAPLP centers people who are part of communities most impacted by the issues we seek to address. This includes Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, women and trans/nonbinary folks, LGBQ+ folks, folks with disabilities, non-native English speakers, and anybody whose identity has not been traditionally invested in. While the program centers these people in particular, VAPLP serves emerging leaders across all identities who work towards racial & social justice.
Lived Experience
Want to see more details specific to our Summer 2026 programming?
Retreats and Workshop Details
Sample Schedule
Important Dates
Staff Preview
Application Process
See what our alumni have to say about VAPLP…
“Our dreams and our expectations out of Virginia and our country are not too idealistic, that we can work together, that the frameworks for us working together already exist, and that we can collaboratively make a more progressive Virginia, and that some of the things that we want, they're not too much. Human rights are just enough. We can do it.”
-Nicole (she/her), Disability Justice + Direct Service
“place holder for different testimonial video”
-Nicole (she/her), Disability Justice + Direct Service
“place holder for different testimonial video”
-Nicole (she/her), Disability Justice + Direct Service
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the curriculum rooted in?
Our program model is guided by a north star of liberatory leadership. As described by the Leadership Learning Community, liberatory leadership is an invitation to leaders to live out the compelling vision of collective liberation through the transformation of ourselves, our communities, and our institutions. Liberatory leadership is rooted in self-love and right-relationship with others and facilitates the power, joy, and thriving of all people.
Strategies for Social Change takes this idea further; liberatory Leadership operationalizes liberatory vision. It draws on numerous personal, organizational, and community practices that invite us to assess, reflect on, unlearn and discard relationships that center power based in supremacy, division and dominance, and invite in models based on equity, community, and self-determination.
Unlike holistic leadership development programs like Rockwood, political and public service leadership programs like Sorensen, or candidate training programs like Meet Our Moment, VAPLP provides training, networks, and resources to drive social movement strategies forward. Through reflection and analysis of the Virginia today and visioning of the Virginia as it should be, participants focus on three core skill-building topics to get there: community organizing, storytelling & narrative, and money & capital.
Our curriculum centers theory and practice from BIPOC movement leaders and organizations. How much does VAPLP cost?
There is no cost to attend the program. We cover food and lodging at the skill-building retreats, and offer stipends for eligible participants to cover the cost of travel and childcare.
How much does VAPLP cost?
There is no cost to attend the program. We cover food and lodging at the skill-building retreats, and offer stipends for eligible participants to cover the cost of travel and childcare.
Who can attend VAPLP?
VAPLP is open to any Virginia resident who is actively doing social change work. We prioritize BIPOC folks and those with diverse lived experiences. Our program is for both emerging and seasoned leaders. What we primarily look for is a set of characteristics:
Empathy + Growth Mindset
Effective Communication
Relationships + Community
Commitment to Equity + Social Justice and Intersectional Analysis
Process as Product
Critically Reflective
Self-Awareness
Liberatory Imagination
Each pod is multiracial and multigenerational. The demographics of Pod 9 include folks in age from mid-20s to mid-50s, primarily Black and other folks of the global majority, geographically across Virginia, and primarily women and trans/nonbinary folks. When we select the final participants for the pod, we’re not just considering each individual but we’re looking at the collective pod as a whole.
Who makes up the Selections Committee?
The Selections Committee is composed of VAPLP alumni and program staff. You can find the members for the Pod 12 Selections Committee here. This team will be reviewing applications, interviewing candidates, and ultimately determining the participants of that pod.
What waivers are required to be signed upon acceptance in the program?
There are three waivers that you can view here: Participation Agreement, Release and Waiver of Legal Liability, Media Release.
Who makes up the VAPLP team for the summer?
Each retreat will have a four-person team, three facilitators and one operations staff. You can view the facilitation team for Pod 11 here.
What am I committing to when I confirm my acceptance into VAPLP?
****commitments
some missing
