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.

The Virginia Civic Engagement Table (VCET) is a civic engagement organization dedicated to empowering marginalized communities, advancing social and racial justice, and strengthening democracy in Virginia. At the Virginia Civic Engagement Table, we confront the enduring impacts of systemic white supremacy and attacks on democracy in Virginia. VAPLP is our flagship program in leadership development. Through VAPLP, we chart a path that shifts power toward equity and justice.

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.

Descargue nuestro "Paquete Informativo" de VAPLP

Download our VAPLP "Info Packet"

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.