In this profoundly fractured world of ours, all of our Work That Reconnects efforts aim toward tending and mending the living web of all life. For the past several months, Interhelp’s “Tending and Mending the Web” Action Circle members have been focusing on the webs of human connection created and supported in our workshops and community events.
Action Circle members are excited to release our document-in-process, Interhelp Community Guidelines for Tending and Mending the Social Web.
We invite you to read this document, mull it over, and engage with us in making the document better. Also, we hope you will join us in skill-building as we learn together how to better tend, and mend when needed, our webs of connection. Below you’ll find details of a Community Practice Day in April; we hope you can attend.
The heart of this document is a set of Community Guidelines. Some will be familiar, because they are often presented as “agreements” at the openings of workshops. Newer guidelines have grown out of the recognition that our workshop spaces have often been unintentionally unwelcoming, and sometimes unsafe, for people from a wide variety of backgrounds and life situations.
The document includes “how-to’s” to try when mending is needed (Mechanisms for Maintenance and Repair) and background material on Anti-Oppression and Decolonization, Honoring the Impact of Trauma, and Protecting the Container of the Community.
The more we (not only facilitators!) work with these guidelines, the more our workshop spaces – indeed all of our activist and healing work – will benefit.
Click here for the main document, here for supporting material. Comments, questions, suggestions and dialogue are all needed and welcome. Contact me here.
I love the teamwork and community spirit of Work That Reconnects, and hope to engage with many of you soon!
Paula Hendrick, for the Tending and Mending Action Circle
Aravinda Ananda, Carol Harley, Kristina Orchard, Sarah Pirtle and Paula Hendrick
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Community Practice Day (NOTE: THIS EVENT WAS HELD APRIL 14; STAY TUNED FOR MORE EVENTS ON THIS TOPIC)
April 14, 2018
Let’s get bigger together!
As a community we are learning how to create workshop spaces that are welcoming for all and that support powerful journeys through the Spiral of the Work That Reconnects.
This day is open to all who have participated in at least an introductory WTR workshop.
Every participant makes a difference in this effort!
We will explore how we can live into our new and evolving Community Guidelines. Practice, including role plays, will be an important focus.
We invite you to bring actual situations you have experienced, or to frame possible situations you can imagine, to be used in our skill-building practice sessions. When we process challenges together, the learning is exponential.
Our practice guides for the day include Sarah Pirtle and Aravinda Ananda.
If you would like to learn more about the day, or sign up to come, please contact Paula Hendrick here.