The Core Nonviolence Commitments Learning and Support Community

The Core Nonviolence Commitments
Learning and Support Community

Nonviolence is a way of being and living that orients, in thought, word, and deed, towards integrating love, truth, and courage in individual and collective action aimed at preserving what serves life and at challenging what doesn’t to transform itself so the human family can realign with life. – Miki Kashtan

As of May 2022 this project is in transition. Meanwhile, we are not accepting any new applications to join us. If you would like to be notified by email when the transition is complete, click here.

(Revised and updated January 2022)

The Core Nonviolence Commitments Learning and Support Community is an ongoing series of independent units or modules, each designed to support participants in engaging, in community, with one of Miki’s 34 Core Nonviolence Commitments.

Each module consists of 3 weekly sessions of 2 hours each via Zoom, facilitated by Nonviolent Communication trainers Helen Adamson and Claudia Sánchez.

The sessions take place on the first 3 Thursdays of the month, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm CET (Central European Time). Find your time zone

The series is offered as a gift. After the completion of each module, we send participants  an email inviting them to choose whether and how much money to give, taking into account their needs for financial stability as well as for contribution. Non-financial contributions to the project are also welcome but in no way required.

Application and participation

To express your interest in participating, the first step is to apply to join The Core Nonviolence Commitments Learning and Support Community. In reviewing your application, if we have questions about whether you meet the criteria for participation* that we ask for, we will invite you to dialog with us about it. If you yourself are uncertain about meeting the criteria or about whether the series is what you are looking for, please contact us at core.nonviolence.commitments@gmail.com and we can discuss it.

Once we are satisfied that you meet the criteria, and as long as in our estimation you continue to meet them, we will send you monthly invitations to sign up for the next upcoming module. You are free to attend as few or as many modules as you would like.

*Criteria for participation in one or more modules:

  • To have some prior experience with the basics of Nonviolent Communication. Ideally to have read Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life and to have attended at least one NVC course covering the basics of NVC. (One possibility is Miki Kashtan’s free online self-study course, Making Life Work.)
  • To be willing to offer and receive compassionate support, opening your heart and mind as much as you can to yourself and the other participants and recognizing how challenging it can often be to live by these commitments.
  • To show up with respect and care for all at all times during and in between sessions.

We value and are committed to doing what we can, within the limits of our capacity, to embrace and support diversity and accessibility. We imagine that we will not always be successful in living up to these aims, and welcome feedback and suggestions.

Focus of the 3 sessions of each module

  • 1st session: An initial exploration of that month’s commitment and how we relate to it.
  • 2nd session: Sharing mournings and celebrations in relation to putting the commitment into practice.
  • 3rd session: Further exploration of some particular aspects of the commitment.

Methodology

We conceive of our role in the series not as trainers or teachers imparting knowledge but as facilitators proposing activities to support us all in sharing, exploring and learning together in community.

Some of the activities take place in the large group and others in pairs or small groups in breakout rooms, generally followed by a harvesting in the big group. In addition, we sometimes propose individual activities such as journaling or drawing.

We offer suggestions of activities you may choose to do after each session and there are also ways to engage with other participants between sessions if you like.

Note that the sessions will not be recorded.

Times and Dates

Each module of the series will take place, in turn, on the first 3 Thursdays of the month, from 6:00 to 8:00 pm CET (Central European Time), via zoom. Find your time zone

Module 1 (Commitment #1): the first 3 Thursdays of January, 2021;

Module 2 (Commitment #2): the first 3 Thursdays of February, 2021;

and so on, over the space of 3 years, with a 1-month break every August and, as of 2022, every December. The series is scheduled to finish in March 2024.

When one of the first 3 Thursdays coincides with a major holiday, we will likely take that day off, in which case the module would finish on the fourth Thursday of the month.

Contacting us

You can contact us with any questions at core.nonviolence.commitments@gmail.com.

Facilitation team

Claudia Patricia Sánchez Bedoya, Certified NVC Trainer

I am originally from Bogotá, Colombia. I spent almost 6 years in Buenos Aires, Argentina where I first had the opportunity to learn NVC, I also learnt it in Chile, Brazil and Canada. I currently live in a small village near my home town. I have been learning and practicing NVC since 2013 and I got certified as an NVC trainer in 2021.

I love to help people to be mindful when communicating, as a Mindfulness practitioner, I bring this to the learning spaces I facilitate plus my experience with Theory U and humanist approaches.

I offer one on one sessions, group sessions and supported conversations for the work context and for schools. I love learning from and with youth. I have been working for two years on a project where I share NVC to students in their final year of school, their parents and teachers. We offer a scholarship to one of them so they can continue university studies.

I am very excited about offering this space for the Core Nonviolence Commitments. I first learned about them in Chile at an IIT at which Miki was one of the trainers. In 2020, when covid hit, we started working with my friend Fernanda Siles from Nicaragua on the commitments. We found that exploring them made a big difference: we experienced deeper levels of acceptance, inner peace, and resilience during the lockdown.

It was a magical and synchronistic coincidence when I received Helen’s invitation to come on board to co-facilitate. I am amazed how NVC and the energy of life has connected me to people like Helen and how safe and smooth it feels to co-create with her.

You can read more about me and what I offer on my website, Comunicación Plena (currently all in Spanish; I plan to make some of the content available in English as well).

Helen Margaret Adamson, Certified NVC Trainer

Originally from Berkeley, California, I live near Barcelona, Spain. I have been learning and practicing NVC since 2003. I started offering NVC workshops in 2007, and I became a Certified Trainer of NVC in 2014.

The idea for this project came to me in a flash during a morning walk in the park in the fall of 2020, and I fleshed much of it out at my dining room table over the course of the rest of the morning. I am thrilled that Miki and her assistant at the time, Isa Stewart, liked the idea and I am very grateful for the support with the logistics that we have received from Isa and BayNVC. I’m also thrilled that Claudia agreed to co-facilitate with me. I love the creative ideas and energy that she brings to the project. We are very much enjoying and learning from our collaboration, our engagement with each commitment, and our interactions with the participants in the sessions.

One of my aims as a trainer is to support people in trusting more and more that they matter and in relaxing into interdependence, freely offering and giving, requesting and receiving with openness and joy. I like to think that my work contributes a “little grain of sand,” as we say in Spanish, to the emergence of a culture of collaboration and of care for ourselves, for each other, and for all life on our precious planet.

  • Apart from the Core Nonviolence Commitments project, my current main NVC offerings are individual mentoring and empathic accompaniment sessions, and courses for experienced NVC practioners on learning how to facilitate NVC-based healing roleplays.

You can read more about me and what I offer on my website, Compartir la CNV (mostly in Spanish, with a few pages available in English as well), or on my profile page on the CNVC website (in Spanish and English).