The Guazabara Foundation

Approach

A person who knows where they come from can decide where they are going.

The Foundation's program has a philosophy, a curriculum, and a workforce. Each is a distinct layer. Each does its own work.

The layers

What stands behind the program.

  • Warrior SutrasThe philosophy

    The Warrior Sutras is a philosophy grounded in cultural identity, consciousness, practice, and life direction. It is the philosophical core of the program. It was authored by Dennis Febo.

  • Cultural and Social Consciousness EducationThe curriculum

    Cultural and Social Consciousness Education, or CSCE, is the curriculum. It was developed in 2010. It has been delivered in justice, educational, and community settings since then. The Warrior Sutras is its first foundational document.

  • Specialized MentorsThe workforce

    Specialized Mentors deliver the program. The work draws on the credible messenger idea: a person who has lived what a participant is living can be heard where others are not. The Foundation holds that idea to a standard. Every Specialized Mentor is trained in the curriculum, cleared, and supervised.

  • The life planThe instrument

    Each participant writes a life plan with a mentor. The plan sets the participant's own goals and names the supports to reach them.

The five modules

What a participant moves through.

Cultural and Social Consciousness Education runs inward to outward. It begins with who a person is and ends with what they can build. Five modules carry that movement.

  1. Cultural EducationWhere a person comes from. Ancestry, the sense of nation, the culture of survival, and the culture of education. The module begins with the right and the power of self-declaration.
  2. Social Consciousness EducationWaking the conscious mind. The power of thought, the mind over the body, the breath. How a person's inner condition and the conditions around them shape each other.
  3. Emotional IntelligenceRecognizing and communicating emotion. Energy in motion, the traveling mind, self-regulation, and the intelligence a person develops through feeling.
  4. Relationship IntelligenceThe relationships a person builds. Love, family, the soul group, community, and nation. Healthy relationships fortify a life.
  5. Self-SustainabilityCarrying the plan into the world. Education, professionalism, work, money, and enterprise. The skills that let a person sustain themselves and the people who depend on them.

Cultural responsiveness

The curriculum meets the cultures in the room.

The Foundation hires from the communities it serves. Staff bring lived experience and cultural knowledge to the work.

Cultural and Social Consciousness Education is built to work with whichever cultures the participants bring. The program provides space that honors each participant's identity and experience.

Where the work begins

From standing, not from lack.

The Foundation does not define the people it serves by what has happened to them. Each person arrives with a culture, a history, and rights. The work builds on that ground.

The Foundation works alongside what is already in a participant's life: family, school, housing, and community.

Authorship and license

Who owns the curriculum.

Dennis Febo is the author and owner of the Warrior Sutras Philosophy and the Cultural and Social Consciousness Education curriculum. The Foundation delivers both under license from him.