How We Build Communities of Practice
The following approaches to building community are borne out of multiple years of engaging with practitioners from diverse contexts. Our team has learned that the complex problems we seek to tackle such as hate and division truly impact the whole of society; therefore, each individual we engage in our Community of Practice sees a direct stake for themselves in the inclusive change they seek to create. In doing so they recognize that they alone cannot overcome the challenges posed. Working together in a mutually reinforcing ecosystems across sectors and connecting across societies and experiences offers the opportunity not only to catalyze change but to build long lasting relationships of trust and support that can accelerate one another towards achieving more justice, inclusive and nonviolent societies.
We Work Full Spectrum
Many key social justice problems are experienced, in different levels of intensity, in countries all around the world and are often not challenges isolated to any one context. The transnational nature of these trends can be seen clearly in global trends of migration, climate change, increased xenophobia and intolerance as well as through civic engagement and good governance. Working across a full spectrum, from peaceful societies through to those experiencing genocide and mass atrocities, allows us to study and understand the range of factors that propel societies back and forth along this continuum and the possible solutions or interventions that help to move societies from targeted mass violence and heightened levels of identity based violence toward peaceful and inclusive coexistence and social cohesion.
Our Work is Virtual
The problems that our organization seeks to tackle and the breadth of contexts across which we hope to source solutions require consistent, real-time engagement and interaction. In order to both keep pace with the rapidly shifting landscapes around us and to reduce the distance between us, all of our programs seek to operate virtually, allowing diverse participants to work together without physically being together and leveraging technology to convene different spaces and conversations in which to do so.
Our Community is Decentralized
To foster a truly inclusive and global community, we thoughtfully and intentionally design decentralized spaces that offer members of our Communities of Practice an opportunity to engage directly with one another at a pace that is best suited to their interests and needs. By encouraging one-on-one connection and by creating online spaces for member-led conversations and programs, our team models a decentralized way of working that motivates radical collaboration and actively shifts power away from traditional top-down models of engagement toward community-driven, inclusive participation.
Our Programming is Integrated
The effort to build and sustain an effective Community of Practice has many different channels and programs through which we convene conversations, learnings and engagement. Each of our streams of work are purposefully integrated to build upon one another to enhance the value and seamlessness that participants experience from being part of the Community of Practice.
We Are Always Iterating
Since the world around us is shifting and changing, we recognize that our own model needs to be adaptive, flexible, and responsive. For this reason we embrace experimentation and piloting new approaches in partnership with the members of our Community of Practice and are always seeking to learn from our experiences, engagements, successes and challenges to improve and advance our model and programming.