Civity is excited to announce that we are now offering virtual workshops!
We are thrilled to share this opportunity at a time when pandemic isolation is keeping us apart. Throughout this year, we’ve been hearing the same thing from our community partners again and again: People are hungrier than ever for spaces and opportunities in their communities in which they can connect.
At Civity, we believe it is important that we create and grow spaces that are intentionally designed to facilitate connection across difference. With this goal in mind, offering virtual workshops expands access to Civity workshops for a broader range of communities and partners. We’ve adapted our workshops to the virtual environment and are now providing the signature Civity experience – engaging, interactive, and meaningful – online.
This fall, we’ve had the opportunity to continue to test and refine our workshop with the support of our incredible partners and their networks.
- In September, we partnered with Welcoming America to offer a virtual Civity workshop for the organization’s national network of community leaders as part of Welcoming Week 2020, an annual celebration designed to bring together people from all backgrounds to help create a more inclusive community.
- In October, we facilitated two virtual workshops for Salt Lake County staff, kicking off the county’s Virtual Employee Week programming.
- Also in October, we collaborated with David Campt of The Dialogue Company and Allison Mahaley of Red Fern on an interactive workshop that opened the virtual annual conference of the University Network for Collaborative Governance (UNCG): “Building a Relational Infrastructure of Civity for Anti-Racist Collaborative Governance.”
- In the new year, we will co-lead a workshop on intrapersonal and interpersonal bridging skills for the YMCA of the Oranges in Wayne, NJ, as part of the organization’s Forever Welcoming series. The series aims to educate and equip participants with the knowledge and/or skills to understand and navigate conflict and unrest, and to engage with people they may not typically work with, while working toward positive change in their communities.
We are grateful to have the chance to be in conversation with so many leaders and organizations working to make communities more welcoming and inclusive, and we look forward to continuing to connect with others who share our vision.
Our virtual Civity workshops give participants the opportunity to experience, learn, and practice foundational relational skills to move their organization or community from “us versus them” to “we all belong.” We share actionable strategies that participants can use to build relational infrastructure in their life and work: how to deepen conversations, how to establish authenticity through storytelling and active listening, how to “put difference on the table,” and how to create and sustain “bridging” relationships of respect and empathy. Participants have the opportunity to practice these skills in the workshop setting by connecting with other participants in intentional, relational, and authentic one-on-one conversations.
We also offer more comprehensive training programs that can be tailored to the needs of your organization, including programs that (1) integrate civity with deeper development of anti-racism work; (2) include more practice and support for engaging in civity conversations post-workshop, and (3) provide additional training for facilitating civity conversations in your own organization and community.
Moving toward a world where everyone belongs starts with building a new relational infrastructure to support a transformative vision and practice of belonging, solidarity, and justice for all. We have the power to change the world we live in by changing the way we are with each other. Each of us individually can contribute to creating a larger “we” by growing our capacity to create “bridging” relationships that recognize the full humanity of others. Our goal is to share knowledge and skills that help individual community leaders create bridging relationships and build new relational infrastructure into existing community networks to better understand those on the other side of power divides.
We’ve designed our virtual workshop for community leaders, including but not limited to civic leaders and public sector employees, nonprofit professionals, workplace managers, human resources professionals, faith leaders, educators,community advocates, and organizational network managers and members. Each of our workshops is customized to meet the specific needs and concerns of the organization or community we are working with.
Interested in learning more about how our virtual workshop can meet your needs?
Contact info@civity.org