Join us for the COVA Annual meeting, an energizing gathering that celebrates the power of volunteerism and the people who make it possible. This year’s featured keynote is presented by Breauna Dorelus, who will guide us through a transformative conversation on the future of volunteerism and the role of volunteer engagement professionals as community builders. Includes a light breakfast and admission to the Atlanta Botanical Garden.
Keynote Presentation
Beautiful Repair: Co-Dreaming and the Work of Shared Care
Engagers of volunteers are stewards of relationships. They are guardians of community access, and can be an essential architect in how people connect with one another. That is power. What would it look like to use that power to repair, rebuild, and foster community for the full future of volunteerism? In this keynote, we will dive into the Co-Dreaming framework as a way to build community, name the power we hold as leaders of volunteers, and discuss how to utilize the gift of repair as a birthplace for rebuilding shared care. Attendees will leave with a reframed understanding of their role as conveners within our ecosystem and strategize about what an inclusive future of volunteerism could look like.
About the Speaker: Breauna Dorelus
Breauna Dorelus is the Founder and Cause Consultant at Connecting the Cause, a consultancy dedicated to centering the community in service by identifying and uprooting harmful volunteer practices, specifically towards Black and brown communities. She started her career as an AmeriCorps member and spent 10+ years in various volunteer management roles in humanitarian aid efforts, refugee resettlement and ministry. Breauna believes in community inclusion in all aspects of the volunteer process and has dedicated her work to ensuring that service centers around co-dreaming, not harmful charity. As a consultant for the past 10 years, she's served as a keynote speaker, trainer, facilitator, and builder.Breauna has worked on multiple projects helping co-create ethos, philosophy, and practices for those who wish to walk alongside others. Her heart work is connected to seeing others have moments of reckoning and reimagination as they move from charity to Co-Dreaming. She received her Bachelor’s degree in International Studies from Georgia Southern University, and her Master’s in Public Administration with a concentration in Nonprofit Management from Georgia State University (Summa Cum Laude). As a mama, she loves playing with dinosaurs and coloring with her 5- and 4-year-olds, thrifting, and having a hot matcha latte.
