WHY BUILD?
BUILD is a program of the Practitioner Mobilization for Democracy initiative. As mediation, dialogue and communication practitioners we all need to build community, peer support, and opportunities for professional growth. We work in complex and challenging environments, sometimes with clearly successful outcomes and sometimes with ambiguous outcomes. If we’re not mindful, there are even times when our work can add to the system of harm and toxicity we were brought in to help ease. We need spaces to digest the hard-to-digest experiences we have as practitioners and also to learn from each other. We need to find out what’s helpful; what expectations we might have for ourselves and others; how best to adapt to the multitude of social and political environments we encounter; and how we get ourselves unstuck, or plan our engagement to prevent getting stuck in the first place!
What is BUILD Community of Practice?
BUILD Community of Practice is a lab and learning space for conflict engagement and other practitioners who are working on pro-democracy efforts. It is also a ‘connecting space’ for lay and professional practitioners who are just beginning to explore how to bring their skills to community-building and democracy spaces.
The BUILD Framework for Engagement:
Our community of practice is built on the principles of humility, curiosity, confidentiality, and respect. Participants commit to responsible sharing, focusing on their own experiences without overstepping boundaries. We ask participants to uphold the following commitments:
How Build is Structured
Forms of Support You Can Request from other Participants:
- By "practitioner", we mean everyone who is a facilitator, mediator, host, convenor, community-builder, activist and/or organizer, -- whether formal or informal, paid or volunteer, relatively new or relatively experienced.
- By "democracy", we mean a way of life where when we make decisions together for the benefit of the larger whole, we listen to and consider one another's perspectives.
- A republican form of government is one where we vote for representatives. A republic can be democratic, to the degree that elections are based on informed consideration of issues.
- We see healthy democracies as leader-full. Democracy thrives when we have accountable, facilitative leadership at all levels.
The BUILD Framework for Engagement:
Our community of practice is built on the principles of humility, curiosity, confidentiality, and respect. Participants commit to responsible sharing, focusing on their own experiences without overstepping boundaries. We ask participants to uphold the following commitments:
- As a participant, I commit to embodying humility, showing curiosity, practicing confidentiality, and holding myself and my fellow practitioners in high regard.
- I commit to sharing my experiences responsibly, which means not sharing what's not mine to share, what's not ready to be shared, and what I can't share without shaming and blaming.
How Build is Structured
- Our format is loosely inspired by the Pro-Action Cafe model and Community of Practice Design by Ei Ei Samai
- Meetings are scheduled monthly for 1 1/2 hours (90 min) with 30 minutes additional for those who would like to stick around!
- TIME: 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. ET/7 p.m. CET
- Hosted by Omni-Win Project via ZOOM
- Facilitated by volunteers from a trained and supported network of practitioners working in community building and pro-democracy spaces. We will meet monthly with the facilitators to assess how things are going, if structure, context, etc. needs to change, as an ongoing offer to the volunteers
Forms of Support You Can Request from other Participants:
- Reflection: think out loud and have the group summarize and reflect back what they heard
- Ideation: get ideas of what to do from the group
- Clarifying Questions: have the group ask coaching questions that help you get clarity on your purpose, goals and challenges
- Creative Questions: have the group ask creative, insightful, open ended questions to help you see different possibilities where you are stuck by getting deeper into somatic and subconscious layers
- Resources: get tools, handouts, activities, research, referrals, etc
Offer a project or story to get support with
If you’re interested in offering up a project to share with the group for a future meeting, PLEASE FILL OUT THIS FORM and submit by the 1st of each month. We will notify you in advance of the monthly gathering if your project is chosen for exploration.