Community Activities

"Thinking Peace, Speaking Peace"                                               View Flyer

Thinking Peace, Speaking Peace is a program of Vermont Peace Academy, based on the process of Nonviolent Communication. NVC offers us a personal practice, a language of compassion, a relationship skill, and a tool for positive social change. It provides an easy to grasp, effective method to get to the root of conflict, violence and pain peacefully. Nonviolent Communication has been developed by Dr Marshall Rosenberg over the last 40 years, emerging initially out of his experience as a participant in the Civil Rights and Peace movements. The program is now being taught worldwide in corporations, classrooms, prisons and mediation centers, in health care, in war torn regions, and in intimate personal relationships. It is effecting cultural shifts as institutions, corporations and governments integrate NVC consciousness into their organizational structures and their approach to leadership. An international network of NVC practitioners, including over 180 certified trainers, now live and teach this process in 35 countries.

The website for the Center for Nonviolent Communication is www.cnvc.org

As a practice, Nonviolent Communication helps us to:

•  Build relationships based on compassion and understanding
•  Hear the needs behind anyone's behavior, in hostile and challenging situations
•  Be clear about language that alienates, and language that connects to meet the     most needs of all
•  Break patterns of thinking that lead to anger and depression
•  Dissolve the 'power over' systems into 'power with' systems
•  Take responsibility for our choices  

In Vermont, through VPA, we have practitioners who are taking this program into the education system, into the corrections system, and wherever there is the call from individuals, groups, and organizations to learn, practice and integrate this life enriching approach into their life and work. We believe that this relationship based approach is highly advantageous when it can be integratedinto all levels of a system. For example, when management and staff of a prison as well as inmates can all learn the NVC approach, or when teachers, administrators, parents, and students within a school can engage this process in their learning community, we see the emergence of greater personal responsibility, empowerment and compassion among all the members of that system. The practice of NVC increases safety, respect, accountability, responsibility and compassion, and places us on the path to a thriving, diverse and peaceful culture.

For further details of Vermont Peace Academy 's program, contact Wendy Webber wendywebber1947@yahoo.com

Take your whole family to camp this summer and learn more about communication, conflict resolution and Nonviolent Communication (NVC). From July 28th – August 3rd one of Camp Common Ground’s morning adult programs focuses on NVC. All our family programs emphasize diversity and communication. See our website for more information. http://www.cgcvt.org/camp/week1.shtml