Dear fellow OS'rs, Below is my "ask" to seek funding to attend the "Whole System in the Room" workshop offered by Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff and which Michael Pannwitz is organizing.
If you can help in any way (including forwarding the letter), I'd much appreciate it. Thanks, Raffi Aftandelian ______________ Dear colleagues, I am an Armenian-American who has been working in Russia as a volunteer trainer and facilitator in conflict resolution since 1997, until April this year in Moscow. Currently, I am living and working in Nazran, Ingushetia (a republic bordering Chechnya). I have worked mostly in developing the community conflict resolution training program, Alternatives to Violence Project (www.avpusa.org is the US site), which exists in over 30 countries. A few years on, this work has spread from Moscow to Lipetsk, Ingushetia, Belarus, and Georgia. The training manuals have been translated into Russian and Georgian. There are also plans to adapt the manuals and translate them into Chechen. Over 100 people have been trained in AVP, and another 50 have being trained in social action. It is especially exciting that the AVP trainings in Ingushetia not only provide social rehabilitation but also give young Chechen refugees a sense of hope for the future. Some have also found work in a region with high unemployment. Others have started university and some have written grants and received funding. In Ingushetia, I work with a number of nonprofit organizations that work with Chechen refugees. My work here is to support the counselors who work with Chechen refugees, help them work more creatively. Also, I am a co-trainer that works in Prigorodny District in North Ossetia, site of terrible ethnic clashes in 1992 and ongoing tension between Ossetians and Ingush. We conduct trainings in schools to help tear down the walls that exist between Ingush and Ossetians, both youth and adults. In 2001 I was trained in Open Space Technology by Birgitt Williams in Novosibirsk. Since then I have brought OST into my work at every available opportunity, including in my work here. I am writing to seek your financial support (altogether I need to raise 1200 USD) to attend the Facilitating the Whole System in the Room, a workshop being offered in Berlin in September this year. These funds would go towards my transportation and accommodation during the training, as well as incidentals. ***Why attend this training?*** While I feel that I am a competent trainer and facilitator, I need to be more in touch with my blindspots, be clearer about what my needs and what are the group's. I want to learn how to channel my humor and spontaneity to deepen the work of the group. This workshop will help me develop my own self-awareness as a facilitator and trainer. It will help me develop more economy of action. In my work, I will be able to create group spaces where there is more creative spirit, more courage, and more vulnerability. I will directly share through mini-workshops what I learned at this training with my colleagues here in the North Caucasus. ***What can I offer?*** Before or after the workshop, I can offer the following: -a presentation on my work in Ingushetia -consult those who are interested in working in Chechnya, the North Caucasus, or Russia -a mini Alternatives to Violence Project workshop -conduct an Open Space meeting on a topic of importance to your/your organization -oral Russian-English/English-Russian translation and... -lessons in introductory juggling and spiced popcorn ***If you feel you can support me*** Please contact me. If you would like to make a bank transfer, I can send you the account particulars. If you don't think you can help, might you consider forwarding this message to others? Thanks for your consideration. Raffi Aftandelian tel/fax +7 (8732)225218 mob. +7 928-961-3795 Raffi mailto:[email protected] ________________________ Dear Colleagues, We invite you to join us in year three of an exciting new seminar integrating systems change and personal growth. We created Facilitating the Whole System in the Room for leaders who want to increase their ability to help diverse work groups achieve key goals. We define "facilitating" as a learnable skill necessary to the betterment of work groups and society. The seminar weaves together systems and self-knowledge into simple practices for whole systems improvement. You can do more and work less. "Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!" You need not try to control people’s behavior to get the right things done. Instead, imagine creating conditions under which people motivate themselves to do what needs doing. We greatly increase our ability to do that by taking charge of our own anxiety about success and failure, meeting peoples’ needs, looking good, and resolving conflicting expectations. As we learn a few simple ways to control structure rather than a complex smorgasbord of do’s and don’ts based on trying to control behavior, we achieve more while "intervening" less. Our methods have been refined for 15 years in hundreds of large planning meetings in Africa, Asia, Australia, India, Europe, and North and South America. In this seminar, however, we do not teach any particular meeting designs. Rather, we introduce techniques applicable to any task-focused meeting where dialogue and cooperation are desired. As we learn the arts of shaping our own inner dialogues and of enabling dialogue across boundaries of function, level, education, culture, class and ethnicity, we greatly enhance our ability to make positive ripples in the world. In our ongoing development as facilitators, we have found this way of working to be both freeing and life-changing. We invite you to join us in 2003. Sincerely, Sandra Janoff and Marv Weisbord * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
