Flamekeeper Cohort:
Fall 2025

Do you …

Find yourself naturally supporting others through life’s challenges?

• Volunteer to serve others in your community through emotional support and human connection?

• Considered becoming a therapist or life coach, but that’s not your career calling (for now at least)?

• Care deeply about being involved in your neighborhood?

You might be what we call a “Flamekeeper” – a person who tends the “flame” of the human journey in the people around you.

Flamekeepers Among Us

Flamekeepers like you are people who show up with a caring presence in their neighborhoods and in our city, who feel compelled to give a listening ear or a supportive shoulder. They are known by their friends to make a point of celebrating milestones together, of acknowledging challenges, of holding folks through important transitions – of honoring the human journey.

Flamekeepers are at a point in their lives where they feel solid about the self-exploration they’ve done, and feel ready to turn outward to volunteer their time and skill to support others. Their goal these days is to grow through service. Something deep within – a formative experience, or an existential, ethical, or spiritual impulse that’s hard to communicate to others – drives Flamekeepers like you to serve others and grow your skills of human connection.

Flamekeepers might serve as hospice volunteers and lay chaplains, as teen mentors and big siblings at the community center, as peer mental health counselors and support group facilitators, as companions to people who are sick or elderly or unhoused, or as recommitted family members and community builders—anywhere they can practice being a human being to other human beings.

The Opportunity: Igniting a Spark Together

The work of a Flamekeeper is its own reward. Whether under the auspices of a volunteer organization or in individual contexts, Flamekeepers find their own ways to keep showing up and doing what matters.

But what happens when the often invisible, lonesome work of Flamekeepers is intentionally nourished by community? What happens when Flamekeepers find other Flamekeepers—other like-hearted neighbors who share a desire to serve, learn, and grow? What happens when Flamekeepers are supported by opportunities to process and reflect on their experiences, by people with deep experience and sources of wisdom to learn from, and by a structure to transform service into learning among fellow travelers?

Our answer: Magic happens. Flamekeepers’ lives are enriched, the work they do becomes sustainable, and the impact on their neighborhoods grows. When and where Flamekeepers come together, a spark ignites—for a world where neighbors see and are seen by each other, for a world where each of our hearts and spirits are cared for, for a world where our rent-apart social fabric begins to be rewoven, one neighborhood at a time.

Inaugural Flamekeeper Cohort: Hayes Valley

So here at the SF Contemplarium, we are igniting that spark by launching a community for Flamekeepers starting this September with our Fall 2025 Flamekeeper Cohort in Hayes Valley.

As a cohort, 12–15 participating Flamekeepers will:

• Support and learn from each other

• Learn from professionals (like the ones in the Flamekeeper Series), and

• Serve their neighborhood together

Because we believe in the power of place and proximity, we want to form cohorts with members who live or work in the same or nearby neighborhoods of San Francisco, starting with Hayes Valley (or adjacent areas). The cohort will represent a cross-section of the neighborhood, bridging all walks of life with a common dedication to honoring the human journey.

The cohort program will include:

• Kick-Off Retreat: Full-day sessions over the weekends of September 13 and September 20, 2025

• Regular Cohort Sessions (including guest practitioner workshops, trainings, and other events) over the next 2–3 months

Shared Neighborhood Ritual Project: The cohort program will culminate in a shared neighborhood ritual project that will create space to honor some aspect of the human journey in the neighborhood