Designing for Peace
Cultivating the conditions for peace together to build conflict resilience in the relationships, groups, and communities that matter most to us
Four Thursdays - Sep 10, 17, 24 & Oct 1
10am PDT, 2 Hours Live on Zoom
(1pm EDT, 18h BST, 19h CEST, find your time)
Hosted by Root Cuthbertson, Shore Charnoe, and Aidan Young
Have you ever been part of a group that fell apart the moment things got hard? Where a single tense conversation, an unspoken resentment, or an old wound nobody addressed was enough to derail months of good work?
Now, imagine a group that can move through conflict and disturbance and emerge more connected than before; where people feel safe enough to bring their whole selves; where feedback is welcome instead of feared; where difficult emotions have somewhere to go instead of building up into resentment.
What's the difference between those two groups?
Modern medicine has increasingly shifted from treating illness to cultivating the conditions for wellness in the first place. Designing for Peace takes the same approach to conflict. Rather than waiting until things fall apart and then trying to fix them, this course explores the conditions that promote well-being, harmony, and resilience from the start, so that conflict can become part of a creative process rather than something damaging.
Over four weeks, we will explore four peace principles and leave with practical tools for building peace and conflict resilience into our own groups, relationships, and communities.
Ready to Join Us?
We offer a sliding scale for accessibility, and truly appreciate those who help create balance by giving more!
Village Discount
Members of the Living Connection 1st Village and/or Village Building receive a discount on all of our programs.
Click below to enroll at the discounted price (you will be asked to sign in).
Program Overview
Expected Outcomes & Week-by-week Schedule
By the end of Designing for Peace, you'll have a practical framework, the Peace Principles, that you can begin applying right away in the groups and relationships that matter most to you.
You'll know how to recognize your own Personal Peace (and its absence), and you'll have core routines like Sit Spot, Sense Meditation, and Gratitude to help you find, strengthen, and return to it.
You'll have a deeper understanding of how groups build Unity, communicate well through the Good Message principle, and hold space for Healing when old wounds or trauma surface.
You'll leave with the confidence to introduce the Peace Principles to your own group, and with concrete tools, including the Clearing Procedure and Clean and Clear, for navigating conflict when it arises.
Week by Week Schedule
Each session will include new topics, group discussions and exercises, and optional additional work and reading that can be done between sessions.
Session 1: Personal Peace (Sep 10)
Course Framing and Expectations
An introduction to the four peace principles: personal peace, interpersonal peace, group peace, and healing.
Personal Peace
Practices and overview for attaining and maintaining personal peace and wellbeing.
The Attributes of Connection
These are markers of a person who has grown their capacity for connection, and together they form a practical description of what personal peace looks like.
Session 2: Group Peace (Sep 17)
Group Peace is the ability to cooperate and move forward together, balancing the big picture with the details, agreements, and procedures that get things done. A group with a shared sense of both direction and process finds it easier to reach alignment.
Session 3: Interpersonal Peace and Healing (Sep 24)
Interpersonal Peace
This is about choosing your finest words: how people communicate one-on-one, give and receive feedback, and build trust through considerate, honest communication. A strong feedback culture, where positive feedback is the norm, makes it far easier to offer and receive constructive feedback when it's needed.
Healing
When the other three principles are well in place and conflict still keeps arising, it's often because something from the past (a personal, family, or cultural wound) is shaping the present. Healing means creating space to acknowledge and address that, rather than letting it surface sideways as tension or conflict.
Session 4: Bringing These Principles Home (Oct 1)
Putting Peace Into Practice
How the four principles show up at an organizational level, and practical ways to begin introducing them into your own group or community.
Group Reflections & Questions
We will dedicate some time to addressing any questions or reflections that arise from the group.
Wrapping the Bundle
We will wrap up with closing gratitude, and sending good energy out into the world.
Ready to Join Us?
We offer a sliding scale for accessibility, and truly appreciate those who help create balance by giving more!
Village Discount
Members of the Living Connection 1st Village and/or Village Building receive a discount on all of our programs.
Click below to enroll at the discounted price (you will be asked to sign in).
Facilitators
Root Cuthbertson
Root designs experiential opportunities for learning by creating strong containers for the graceful facilitation of group energy. He holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Education, and certificates in Sustainable Curriculum Design, Participatory Facilitation, and Ecopsychology. He has co-led short courses on regenerative cultures and cultural mentoring for Schumacher College, Findhorn College the ALT program in Thailand, and is a certified trainer in Gaia Education eco-social design. With his wife Deborah Benham, he has delivered trainings on Sociocracy, Positive Leadership, Social Entrepreneurship, and Culture Repair. Former Training Coordinator for Transition Network, he is the co-author and curator of Transition resources on Personal Resilience, Conflict Resilience, Group Culture, and Social Justice. He has been part of teams in the UK offering programs introducing the Connection 1st framework, and has co-led the Connection 1st online courses: “Introduction to Regenerative Community Building,” “Designing for Peace,” and "Pathways to Village Building.” With Jon Young and Deborah, he is co-authoring a series of e-books on regenerative community design. With his ear to the ground, Root’s guiding question is: “What is most needed here now?”
Shore Charnoe
Shore has dedicated her life to helping others understand the value of community, of peace-tending, of deep connection to the natural world, and of living in service to the needs of future generations.
Homeschooled, Shore holds an extended Bachelor of Arts in environmental studies, ecosystem restoration, anthropology, sociology, the philosophy of education, and developmental psychology from Guelph University. She also holds an Indigenous Social Work degree from First Nations Technical Institute and has, since 1994, run a private counseling practice for special-needs and at-risk populations.
Mother of eleven adopted and biological children and grandmother of six, Shore has fostered many special-needs children and been a child welfare consultant.
A practicing social worker, Shore founded The Circle for Change to heal damaged relationships and communities. She also co-created Manitoulin Eco Park and Dark Sky Preserve, where people can build relationship with the natural world.
Shore serves as a director for Earth Path Forest School, and for WWOOF Canada. She serves as a co-facilitator and sits on several advisory councils for Connection 1st.
Visit https://www.thecircleforchange.net/ to learn more about Shore.
Aidan Young
Aidan is a musician, naturalist, and mentor. Over the past 20+ years, he has mentored hundreds of musicians, including over a dozen that went on to top music schools, performed on stage over a thousand times, mentored youth and adults in nature connection, including Kamana services, and guided people on their creative paths as a personal mentor. He is a graduate of the Kamana Program and experienced in the Shikari Tracker Training Program, has served on several Art of Mentoring acorns, helped produce The 512 Project, plays guitar, bass, piano, and mandolin, sings, and writes songs. He currently offers music lessons and personal mentoring and lives in Los Altos, CA with his wife Mystical and their three children.