2026 Belonging & Civic Muscle Learning Cohort
The Inland Empire Vital Conditions Network’s inaugural Belonging & Civic Muscle Cohort brings together 15 community teams in a ten-month learning and action journey. Participants are strengthening the relationships, practices, and shared capacities that help people work across differences and shape a future in which every person and place in the Inland Empire can thrive.
Through in-person Learning Labs, virtual peer connections, and team-based practice between gatherings, cohort members are exploring how belonging and civic muscle grow within individuals, relationships, organizations, networks, and communities. The journey began in early 2026 and will culminate in a Harvest gathering in December.
Belonging and Civic Muscle (BCM) is at the heart of the Vital Conditions for Health and Well-Being. It ensures that all members of a community are valued, feel connected and supported, have meaningful ways to contribute, and have a hand in shaping the future. Belonging means experiencing genuine connection, being valued, and having a meaningful place within a community. Civic Muscle is our collective capacity to contribute, work across differences, and shape a shared future.
Belonging and Civic Muscle also help communities make progress across all the other Vital Conditions. They strengthen the relationships, trust, shared agency, and collaborative capacity needed to address complex challenges and create enduring well-being.
Why Now?
Across the country and in the Inland Empire, many people are experiencing isolation, division, mistrust, exhaustion, and uncertainty. Communities are being asked to meet urgent needs while also imagining and building something better.
The cohort creates space for community stewards to slow down, strengthen relationships, practice working across differences, and develop new ways of seeing and acting together. Its purpose is twofold:
- To help participating teams grow belonging and exercise civic muscle within their own organizations, networks, and communities
- To help IEVCN discover how these capacities can be strengthened and spread across the Inland Empire over time
The cohort combines personal and relational practice with collective learning and action. Participants are learning how to connect, bridge, heal and repair, weave shared stories and commitments, co-create solutions, and grow the infrastructure for shared stewardship.
Cohort Journey
Each Learning Lab builds on the one before it. Between gatherings, teams meet to reflect, practice new skills, and identify opportunities to apply what they are learning within their own spheres of influence. The journey moves from experiencing and practicing belonging to weaving connection, co-creating new possibilities, and growing a culture of shared stewardship.
Meet the 2026 Cohort
Chosen from more than 45 applicants, the inaugural cohort includes 15 teams representing a wide range of communities, sectors, and approaches to strengthening well-being across the Inland Empire. The cohort reflects a shared readiness across the region to invest in the relationships, skills, and partnerships that make meaningful collective progress possible.
Inside the Learning Journey
Learning Lab 1: Belonging
Belonging in experience and practice
The first Learning Lab invited cohort members to experience belonging before approaching it as an organizational or community strategy. Participants explored how belonging begins in the body, practiced becoming more present to themselves and one another, and began strengthening skills for connection, bridging, healing, and repair.
The lab also established the cohort as a learning community. Teams began building the trust and relationships needed to move through the rest of the journey together.
Peer Connection: Practicing Between Gatherings
During the first virtual Peer Connection, cohort members reflected on how the practices introduced in the lab were showing up in their lives, teams, and organizations. The session created space to reinforce learning, share experiences, and continue building relationships across the cohort.
Learning Lab 2: Weaving
Social connection in divided times
The second Learning Lab focused on the forces contributing to social isolation and division and on how communities can intentionally weave stronger connection.
Participants explored the power of story and narrative, including how stories can connect, humanize, divide, or reduce people to a single perspective. Teams practiced listening for the values and strengths within one another’s stories and began developing shared commitments rooted in their hopes for the Inland Empire.
Peer Connection: Carrying the Practice Forward
The July Peer Connection helped teams reflect on what they were learning about connection, story, bridging, and shared commitments. Participants continued considering how these practices could be carried into their organizations, networks, and community relationships.
IECF Policy & Philanthropy Summit
Connecting cohort learning with the wider region
Cohort members are participating in the 2026 IECF Policy & Philanthropy Summit, where themes and insights from the journey will contribute to a broader regional conversation about belonging and civic muscle.
Learning Lab 3: Co-Creating
Legacies that unlock human potential
In the next phase of the journey, cohort teams will explore how inherited legacies shape present conditions and future possibilities. Participants will use practices such as empathy, human-centered design, and multisolving to develop and strengthen ideas within their own initiatives.
Learning Lab 4: Growing
A culture of shared stewardship
The fourth Learning Lab will focus on how community stewards create the conditions for more people to contribute and lead. Teams will consider what it means to become better ancestors, bridge generations, renew civic life, and grow ideas that are ready for action.
Harvest
Striding toward thriving together
The cohort will conclude with a Harvest gathering in December. Teams will reflect on the journey, share emerging practices and strategies, consider what should be replicated or spread, and explore opportunities for continued connection and collective action.
What We Are Learning
Several early insights are taking shape across the cohort.
Belonging begins as an experience
Belonging grows through repeated practice
Stories shape what we believe is possible
Bridging does not require erasing differences
Civic muscle grows through weaving
The work moves from “I” to “we”
A Practice for Building Connection
Beginning with Relational Practice
Belonging and civic muscle are strengthened through practices that help people become more present, listen more deeply, build trust, and stay connected when conversations become difficult.
In this video, Troy Bronsink introduces a relational practice used during the cohort journey. Watch the video and consider how the practice might change the way you enter a meeting, listen to another person, or create space for connection.
Tools and Resources
The cohort is generating and gathering resources that can be used by participants and by others interested in strengthening belonging and civic muscle.
Belonging + Civic Muscle Primer
A guide to the individual and collective practices that help all people and places thrive. The primer introduces the Vital Conditions and Thriving Together framing, along with practices for connecting, bridging, healing and repairing, weaving, co-creating, and growing shared stewardship.
Relational Skills Resources
Practices and tools from Troy Bronsink that support presence, listening, trust, connection, and working through challenging moments.
Early Reflections: Learning to Build a Bigger “We”
Read about the cohort’s early learning related to embodied awareness, patterns of belonging, story and narrative, bridging, and weaving.
The Journey in Pictures
Cohort members are learning through conversation, reflection, movement, storytelling, small-group practice, and time together.
Looking Ahead
Across the country and in the Inland Empire, many people are experiencing isolation, division, mistrust, exhaustion, and uncertainty. Communities are being asked to meet urgent needs while also imagining and building something better.
The cohort’s learning continues through the end of 2026. In the coming months, teams will move further into co-creation, innovation, and shared stewardship. They will test and refine ideas within their own organizations and networks, explore what can be carried forward, and consider how the learning from this inaugural journey might support a broader culture of belonging and civic muscle across the Inland Empire.
IEVCN will continue sharing stories, tools, and lessons from the cohort as the journey unfolds.
The IEVCN Belonging & Civic Muscle Cohort is facilitated by Community Initiatives Network partners Monte Roulier and Stacy Wegley in collaboration with IEVCN and regional and national partners. This inaugural cohort is made possible through the partnership of the Inland Empire Community Foundation and the generous support of the Wingate Foundation.