Sign-Up Here

Why BUILD Community of Practice?

BUILD Community of Practice is a program of the Practitioner Mobilization for Democracy initiative. As mediation, dialogue, facilitation and communication practitioners we all need 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. We need spaces to digest the hard-to-digest experiences we have as practitioners and also to learn from one another, as we adapt to the multitude of social and political environments we encounter. 
​

What is BUILD?

BUILD Community of Practice is a lab and learning space for practitioners who are already working on pro-democracy efforts, and it is also a ‘connecting space’ for those of us who are just beginning to explore how to bring our skills to community-building and democracy spaces. 

• By "practitioner", we mean everyone who is a facilitator, mediator, host, convener, 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 we make decisions together for the benefit of the larger whole by listening to and considering 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 curiosity, humility, 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
• Date: Second Thursdays every month
• Hosted on ZOOM (Sign up here to get Registration info)
• Facilitated by volunteers from a trained and supported network of practitioners working in community building and pro-democracy spaces. We meet monthly with the hosting team 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. 
• Clarifying Questions: Invite the group ask coaching questions that help you get clarity on your purpose, goals and challenges.
• Creative Questions: Invite the group ask creative, insightful, open-ended questions to help you see different possibilities where you are stuck by getting deeper into somatic and systemic layers.
• Ideation: Ask the group for their ideas of what to do. No unsolicited advice given!
• Resources: Get tools, handouts, activities, research, referrals, etc.

You can bring a project or story to get support with and/or you can come to support others with their work. 

FILL OUT THIS FORM to receive monthly reminders and occasional updates.