Community Care & Repair

(Session descriptions and registration links below)

What is the Community Care & Repair?

Hosted by the Necessary Trouble Collective, Community Care & Repair (CC&R) is a series of bi-weekly online learning and practice sessions to build the skills and connections we need to create communities of belonging. The skills and practices offered are grounded in principles of nonviolence, emergence, Nonviolent Communication and collective liberation. We intend them to be spaces for people working in social justice and climate justice movements and their intersections to gather, learn skills and receive care and support.

Who is Community Care and Repair for?

Community Care and Repair is primarily intended for anyone who works in service of social, racial or climate justice, paid or unpaid, who wants to build their skills to create and sustain a culture of belonging within the organizations or groups they are part of. It is also intended to support people in Faith communities, intentional communities or co-housing. And we welcome anyone who is interested in principles of nonviolence, Nonviolent Communication, de-escalation, nonviolent direct action and the practical application of these principles.

What happens in the sessions?

Community Care and Repair sessions are 90 minute online mini-workshops where trainers and facilitators share skills and practices that support our collective capacity to care for each other and build communities of belonging. It is a bi-weekly offering that starts with a welcome, an introduction to the skill or practice, an experiential exercise, an opportunity for connection and then a closing. All sessions will be recorded and available to registrants afterwards even if you weren't able to attend.

Image courtesy of Freepik.

Learn More and Register

To learn more and register for each session individually using the links below. This series is being offered through the Gift Economy. You can read a description of how the Gift Economy works below the registration links. When you click to register you will have the option of making a contribution. You can also make a contribution here.

Spring 2025 Sessions

What causes conflict? How can we intervene to diffuse or disrupt conflict in the community before it becomes entrenched? This session will introduce a model of conflict based on unmet needs, as well as strategies to identify those needs and attend to conflict.

How can communities bolster themselves through conflict? In a culture bent on avoiding conflict until it tears the community apart, how can we recentre disagreement productively? This session will present interventions that can make conflict a site of growth and increased connection.

How does the community continue its work if relationships break down? How do systemic hierarchies interact with those in our organisations? This session will apply Nonviolent Communication principles to situations where repair and restoration are not achievable, and methods for working together anyway.

What do we mean when we say we want collaboration? How can that collaboration welcome difference? In this session, we will present some personal practices that will support collaboration, as well as the ways that collaboration can meet our needs and the needs of our communities.

How can we invite all different kinds of people to collaborate? What means will make collaboration fruitful for every participant? This session will present technical and practical skills to facilitate collaboration, some of which include making agreements, checking in, and retaining clarity of purpose.

How can we continue to care for each other when working together? What can we do to acknowledge important moments and make room for varied experiences and perspectives? This session will present skills to care for relationships while working together, including how to make room for difference and listening to all voices.

The Gift Economy

We offer this program through the Gift Economy. The Gift Economy is a radical change in our relationship to money where services are not sold, they are given freely with no fee attached. This removes the financial barrier to participation.

At the same time, we do have financial needs as an organization operating within the current economy. To address these needs, we invite all who participate in our programs to consider supporting our work by making a financial contribution. No one is required to give, and no amount is considered too small or too large.

To learn more, visit our website.

Community Care and Repair Team

Leonie Smith (she/her)

I am a first-generation Canadian of Jamaican heritage. My vocation is to support people from traditionally and historically marginalised populations to show up in the places where they live, work, and play in their full humanity. I work as an organisational consultant, restorative and transformative justice mediator, coach, and trainer sharing principles of non-violence and Nonviolent Communication (NVC).

catherine strickland (she/her)

I am a white settler living on the unceded territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish),and Səlí" lwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations known colonially as North Vancouver, British Columbia. I am an activist, climate change consultant, community builder and Nonviolent Communication trainer. Her passion is supporting people and organizations working for social change to integrate the skills and practices of nonviolence into how they function.

Kazu Haga (he/him)

Kazu Haga is a trainer and practitioner of nonviolence and restorative justice, a core member of Building Belonging, the Ahimsa Collective and the Fierce Vulnerability Network, is a Jam facilitator and author of Healing Resistance: A Radically Different Response to Harm. He works with incarcerated people, youth, and activists from around the country.

He has over 20 years of experience in nonviolence and social change work, and has been an active trainer since 2000. He is a resident of the Canticle Farm community on Lisjan Ohlone land, Oakland, CA.