Upcoming valuable online Trainings!
Sharing with you a couple of high value trainings that are starting soon and have connections with the Inner aspect: Community-Led Assemblies (February-May) and Radical Collaboration & Convergent Facilitation (March), both offered b aligned organisations. Keep reading for more info!
Community-Led Assemblies Training
The ways we organise in communities and relate to each other can make a huge difference in everything else.
If you’re keen to get started on an assembly process in your community –or interested in bottom-up approaches to democracy– this course is for you. It will cover all the elements you need to organise, design, run and make change happen with a community-led assembly.
Mainstream politics happens on the terms of those with power and is clearly making things worse rather than better. But what can we do about it? Are there other ways to make our collective decisions that bring out the best of our human nature rather than the worst? What if we started from the ground of community, and co-created a new culture and politics of being together that values listening, openness, honesty and vulnerability? What kinds of decisions might we make together if we made them through deep listening, and how might they begin to transform us, our communities, our collective politics and our world?
Members of Grassroots to Global / Open Source will share our experience of working with communities in Scotland and East Africa to create assembly processes that attempt to embody a power-with approach and take you step by step through the theory and practice of how to set up and run your own community-led Assembly - and how we can connect these to build a different politics.
We also have a very comprehensive handbook that covers all the areas we look at in the training that you'll recieve once we're through.
Practicalities
This weekly course begins on the 21st February 2024 and runs over 11 evening sessions. These will be from 6.30-8.30pm UK time on Wednesday evenings until 15th May (NB apart from the 3rd and 10th April - see all dates below).
Course Plan: The first two sessions (21st and 28th Feb) are an introduction to assemblies and can be taken on their own. The following nine sessions will dive deeper into the details of how to set up and run an assembly. If you're planning to run an assembly in your community it is recommended that you attend all the sessions, but there are additional resources that can help you catch up if you miss one or two.
Accessibility: All the sessions will be hosted on Zoom. You will be sent a Zoom link via E-mail (if you'd like further joining info, please read: How to join a Zoom meeting). Sessions will include a 10 minute break around half way.
This course is in English language. Please contact us if interpretation would enable you to participate and we will do what we can to provide it.
Recording: Sessions will be recorded and made available via the SCCAN and G2G Youtube channels.
Money: This course is offered for free.
The course will be followed by a twice monthly online support session with others who are at different stages of thinking about, acting on and following up after community-led assemblies. Details to follow.
Course dates
- Feb 21st - 6.30-8.30pm GMT/UTC
- Feb 28th - 6.30-8.30pm GMT/UTC
- March 6th - 6.30-8.30pm GMT/UTC
- March 13th - 6.30-8.30pm GMT/UTC
- March 20th - 6.30-8.30pm GMT/UTC
- March 27th - 6.30-8.30pm GMT/UTC
- April 3rd - HOLIDAY
- April 10th - HOLIDAY
- April 17th - 6.30-8.30pm BST/UTC+1
- April 24th - 6.30-8.30pm BST/UTC+1
- May 1st - 6.30-8.30pm BST/UTC+1
- May 8th - 6.30-8.30pm BST/UTC+1
- May 15th - 6.30-8.30pm BST/UTC+1 - FINAL SESSION
If you have any questions, please contact Eva: evaschonveld@gmail.com
In our efforts to be an equitable and inclusive organisation, we would appreciate it if you can complete our Equalities Monitoring Form to help build an accurate picture of the make-up of our activity participants. This form is voluntary and anonymous.
Radical Collaboration & Convergent Facilitation
Paul Kahawatte and Verene Nicolas, experienced facilitators, trainers and Non Violent Communication practitioners, are offering an in depth introduction to Convergent Facilitation —a powerful approach to facilitating collaborative decision making. It holds massive potential for those working to bring communities, stakeholders and movements together to address our most challenging problems.
We live in a time of multiple devastating crises and challenges—could we come together to find a way to turn things around?
Convergent Facilitation (CF) is a process for getting to a genuine agreement about how to move forward with any shared practical problem or disagreement. It’s particularly transformative with highly polarised issues, helping people find practical ways forward that address what really matters to everyone involved, in an efficient way. CF has helped people in a range of contexts around the world reach creative solutions to complex challenges, where no-one loses or is left behind. The principles of CF can enhance any kind of group facilitation and collaboration.
If you work with groups, organisations, communities or diverse stakeholders trying to make the world a better place, CF could make a big difference to your ability to:
- Find what is important to everyone in a group in a way that brings a people together, even when that might seem impossible
- Support a group to come up with creative ways of fulfilling all the needs people have for a solution, in a meaningful way
- Check carefully for any concerns and actively engage with disagreement about any proposals or ideas, and respond by improving solutions until everyone can genuinely say yes to them
- Engage with imbalances of power and group dynamics, facilitating real collaboration
- Help groups move forwards in clear, effective ways
Practical aspects of the course
Where: Online on Zoom
Language: The course will be held in English. Small groups and additional practice sessions can happen in other languages.
Dates and times:
- Tuesday, Mar 5, 2024 from 03:00 PM to 06:00 PM, Europe/Madrid time (more time zones)
- Tuesday, Mar 12, 2024 from 03:00 PM to 06:00 PM, Europe/Madrid time (more time zones)
- Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024 from 03:00 PM to 06:00 PM, Europe/Madrid time (more time zones)
- Tuesday, Mar 26, 2024 from 03:00 PM to 06:00 PM, Europe/Madrid time (more time zones)
- Plus additional weekly practice sessions
This course is being offered using gift economy principles.
If you have questions you can check the course website or reach out to Paul and Verene at mar24-intro-course@convergentfacilitation.org
