Workshops
GWI workshops aim to catalyze people to build collective systemic change, on a foundation of justice and personal awareness.
We create learning experiences that allow us to collectively deepen our understanding of why our extractive economy is untenable, co-create visions for what else is possible, and hone skills that enable us to move towards building regenerative communities. Sign up for a public workshop or explore our tailored offerings below.
Workshops
Tailored Offerings
Bring our workshops and facilitated offerings to your group or organization! This list represents what we have offered in the past, grouped by topic; all are available in a variety of adaptable formats. It would be possible to assemble and combine topics in different ways to meet your needs. We are happy to talk over option with you – just fill out our intake form and we will get back to you to schedule a time with you.
Just Transition: Framing Systems Change
Connecting, energizing, and interactive explorations of the Just Transition framework, including an overview of principles and practices, centered on the question: What will it take to build systems centered on care for each other and our shared home?
Interactive and energizing, we can adapt this introductory workshop to reflect a group’s purpose, objectives, and meeting length.
(1-2 hours, in-person or online)
Experiential and connecting, this workshop is a way to explore Just Transition principles and practices in more depth, providing a way to build shared understanding and clear next steps for integrating Just Transition in your collective work
(6 hours, in-person)
Designed for people who work together collectively, whether in a community group or in an organization. We facilitate a series of tools for your group to consider how Just Transition principles and practices relate to your work, generating ideas for how to apply them, and imagine ways of moving forward.
(2-4 hours, in-person or online)
Democracy at Work
At GWI, we practice deep democracy, and we actively train, facilitate and coach those who are hungry for more generative and equitable ways of working together.
GWI’s foundational workshop in sharing power, offered in partnership with Co-op Hudson Valley, is an exploration of policies, practices, and cultural shifts for integrating democracy into the ways we work together. Open to organizations, cooperatives, departments, working groups, and committees.
(3 sessions, 2 hours each, online. Additional office hours available)
An introductory overview, with interactive components, of key concepts related to the policies, practices, and cultural shifts needed for integrating democracy into our ways of working together.
(4 hours, in-person or online)
Drawing on GWI’s worker self-directed nonprofit (WSDNP) experience in using circles to organize collaborative work and clarify decision-making mandates.
(1 hour, in-person or online)
Define leadership, power, and some models for sharing leadership and explores two frameworks for why we might want to put effort into practicing shared leadership.
(2 hours, in-person or online)
Conflict Resilience
As we shift to more democratic and cooperative ways of working together, we’ll also need to develop our conflict resilience. We’re bound to encounter differences and tension in our efforts to share power and decision-making. If we can also share skills and tools to navigate these, we can tap into the generative potential of conflict and work through shared dilemmas together. Open to individuals, working groups, organizations and cooperatives, this workshop is offered as an eight-session online series.
Communication Skills for Working Together is an eight-week training in Nonviolent Communication facilitated by Nicole Bauman for engendering embodied self-connection, building capacity to gain support and clarity, and relating to ourselves, our colleagues and our collaborators with empathy.
(8 sessions, 2 hours each, online. Additional practice sessions available)
Deepening Collaboration in the Conversations We Need: This 5-week workshop, facilitated by Nicole Bauman, is focused on deepening collaboration in feedback conversations with practical guidance for how we can prepare and communicate in ways that are rooted in empathy for ourselves and others.
(5 sessions, 2 hours each, online. Additional practice sessions available)
Social Equity and Racial Justice
In our commitment to sharing power equitably, there are legacies of unequal power that we can’t ignore. Practicing social equity at work means explicitly developing our awareness of power, privilege and difference , and aligning our awareness with action. We learn to turn away from domination and toward partnership in our communication and relationships. We practice skills and tools aligned with sharing power.
Two interconnected two-hour workshops offered in partnership with Yoga Lab to explore the practice of mindfulness as a path to social change: 1) Dismantling the Oppression Within Us supports us in facing the systems of oppression that live within us, and 2) From Recognition to Repair, supports us to deepen our inner seeing of systems of inequity and to develop our capacity to acknowledge injustices.
(2 hours, in-person or online)
In this two-hour interactive workshop offered online or in person, Micah curates media and shares his own personal story of navigating a landscape of racism and asks us what we are willing to consider in order to create social equity beyond a vague sense of “all are welcome” in the spaces we create in our work and in our lives.
(2 hours, in-person or online)
Special Projects
Using our approaches rooted in social equity and power-sharing, and pulling exercises from human-centered design and participatory facilitation principles, we offer support for special projects or can craft workshops to fit your goals.
A two-hour introduction to participatory facilitation, including tools, practices, and techniques for healthier and more productive working groups.
In response to a group’s clear shared question, facilitation of a two- to three-hour session for generating ideas, identifying synergies, and determining energy, actions, and/or roles to act on them.
A multi-session facilitated exploration of ways of working in support of deeper understanding of ourselves and one another, alongside developing shared clarity on what’s important to us and what we can agree to practice in our interactions at work.
A two-hour interactive in-person workshop in support of shared understanding of the collective work of a nonprofit governing body, providing a way towards clarity for individual board members to engage in the collective work of the board and in support of the work of the nonprofit.