Training
“Emergent strategy [is] strategy for building complex patterns and systems through relatively small interactions… Emergence emphasizes critical connections over critical mass, building authentic relationships, listening with all the senses of the body and mind.”
The training programs at RJI are designed with emergent strategy. We’ve got big visions for a healed planet full of liberated beings who create beloved communities. Getting there will take many small steps, heaps of decolonizing, a good deal of unlearning, and a whole ton of rediscovery. Our trainings are interdependent studies in restorative justice, transformative justice, and all the other things we’ll need to actualize the world we dream of. Through each interdependent study, a (relatively) small interaction, we build out bit by bit complex patterns and systems. We are building critical connections, deep and narrow, whose ripples expand infinitely outwards.
Interdependent studies include a mix of teaching, listening, practicing, and connecting.
They move slowly, building trust, taking time. We have a staff of facilitators who bring their unique skills and interests to the core curriculums that define our offerings. The facilitators are as much teachers as they are students, that’s why we call them facilitators. These staff members guide groups through the unlearning, rediscovery, and building process such that each participant leaves each training capable to bring their community that much closer to the world of mutual liberation we all dream of. Our training starts and ends with Right Relationships, meeting each participant where they are with whatever needs and gifts they have with care, to work together towards mutual liberation. These are not just training programs available for people to acquire new skills. These are training programs meant to change the people so that they can change the world (to borrow from Grace Lee Boggs). We hope you’ll join us.
The following reflect the kind of the interdependent studies we offer:
Relationships as Healing Overview
Restorative Justice as Public Safety: Emerging Strategies
Abolitionist Frameworks: A Public Health Framework for Reducing Policing and Exclusionary Discipline
The Colonization and Decolonization of Restorative Justice
Facilitator Training: Conversation Circles with Community/Peers
Issues of Power, Bias and Whiteness in Restorative Justice
Transformative Justice Lens
Our interdependent study opportunities are offered on a sliding scale with three guide points, detailed below.
symbiotic contributions have the smallest monetary value and are intended for folks who identify with one or more of the following categories: single-income households, student, under-employed, minimum wage earners, unemployed, folks with lived experience of systemic violence/oppression, QTBIPOC. This contribution value is not fixed, folks are invited to give little as appropriate to their capacity.
sustaining contributions are tied to the monetary value that best represents a “real cost” of the programming. The majority of spaces at our programming are offered at this contribution value.
solidarity contributions have the largest monetary value and are made available to folks with wealth who would like to support the folks contributing at the other end of the spectrum. These contributions are not fixed, solidarity contributors are given the opportunity to give more as appropriate to their capacity.