Our Vision and Values
Our Vision
Constructive Communities envisions a world that reflects our profound interconnectedness through a foundation of support and accountability in our interpersonal relationships, communities, and organizations. We believe that bringing our values into alignment with our actions and approaching conflict as an opportunity for transformation are two key ways we practice this vision. By doing so, we are more equipped to work collectively toward a future rooted in justice, liberation, and equity.
Our Values
Constructive Communities is guided by the following values:
Learning
We are all teachers and learners, engaged in a lifelong process of building self-awareness, better understanding our world, and cultivating skills that help us be responsible stewards of it. We employ a variety of learning modalities and design workshops that are experiential and interactive to create the conditions for all people to learn from and with each other.
Mutuality
As humans, we all mess up and sometimes hurt others, and we are all impacted by times we’ve been hurt ourselves. We also recognize the tremendous power of acts of care, solidarity, and support that help us move through challenges and live more fulfilled lives. We honor this mutuality by creating spaces where we can share how we’ve been impacted and embrace the responsibility of repair. Our workshops and facilitation also frequently use pair, small-group, and large group activities that strengthen our ability to collaborate and meet our individual as well as collective needs.
Just Community
Communities, whether they be within a workplace, neighborhood, home, or elsewhere can model a vision of justice that balances accountability with support. This means actively working to dismantle oppressive systems and shift the ways they show up among our relationships and institutions. When sharing tools and frameworks, we talk about how they are influenced by unjust and harmful beliefs, practices, and structures in order to embody new ways of being together that allow all people to feel cared for and included.
Equity and Inclusion in Action
Striving to live out Constructive Communities’ vision and values requires an understanding of the realities we seek to shift and how oppressive systems and power imbalances currently shape our organizations and our world as a whole.
While the fields of conflict resolution and restorative justice contain tremendous wisdom and practices, they often fail to adequately address the impacts of systemic racism, colonialism, power, and privilege. As a white practitioner, student, and educator within these fields, I knew we needed to incorporate a sharper anti-oppression and equity lens into our workshops and facilitation.
In order to do this more effectively, we invested in equity- and inclusion-focused trainings, as well as an online membership community for course creators nurturing diverse learning spaces. This has led to an ongoing process of updating our workshop materials, reviewing our organizational practices, and revising how we design our services to be more inclusive and equitable.
In the spirit of mutuality and learning from mistakes, I welcome feedback and suggestions about how Constructive Communities can be in greater alignment with these commitments. Feel free to share that on our contact page.
-Liz London, Founder and Lead Facilitator
April 2022