"The Power Of Circles" Teleseminar Series
Co-led by Maureen Jack-LaCroix and Cathryn Lecorre.
Experience first hand a powerful technology of change that helps people bridge the gap between vision and action. Be the Change Action Circles. Join with others who are ready to convene circles to transform their lives from within and create a conscious community of practice with others.
You can learn the Be The Change technology through reading the manual, sure, but in the spirit of circles, we want to support you. We're offering an 8-week teleseminar (starting with this all-star introductory class) so you can go through the Be the Change curriculum with other convenors, engage in the process of change, receive facilitation coaching, ask tons of questions and be empowered to be a circle convenor, taking this practice into your communities.
Be the Change Circles transform good intentions into concrete acts. Together we reflect on our values, choose intentions we really care about, pledge to do one small (or not so small) action each week and feel accountable to each other to fulfill our commitment.
Learn transformational facilitation skills: the importance of connection with content, radical authenticity, bringing forth the wisdom and creativity within the circle, and graceful ways to lead change.
Engage in the challenges facing humanity and take your essential part in the Great Turning. Share your own stories and listen to others. This is a unique opportunity to have the insights and epiphanies you'd rarely have just by yourself. Use the support of others to help you be a leader for change in 2012.
Call in every other Tuesday from 5:00 – 6:30 pm PST. The 8-session schedule is as follows: February 21, March 6, March 20, April 3, April 17, May 1, May 15, and May 29. These sessions will be recorded and available for registrants who are unable to attend the live events.
“Here’s an excellent tool for individuals and groups who want to make a tangible difference. I love the realism, practicality, ingenuity and zest with which Be the Change helps us approach the big issues of our time.” ~ Joanna Macy
Click here to register! Includes a complementary PDF copy of the new 5th Edition Action Guide - an additional $15 value!
Why are we doing this?
We are committed to helping make 2012 a breakthrough year for our world. We’re here to support and empower citizen leaders like you with the tools and process designed to help us reach out to others in our communities, to educate and inspire them to use their lives as powerful agents of change.
Here are just a few of the insights you'll learn in your Be The Change Tele-Circles:
- Key circle concepts to help create a safe space for all participants
- Heart-based processes to deepen relational connection
- Reflective listening techniques to facilitate dialogue
- Processes to help leverage peer accountability as a supportive tool
- Rotating storytelling to include everyone and manage time effectively
- Using the Action Guide as an all-encompassing curriculum for lifestyle exploration
- Best practices from participating facilitators
- Including community project development along with individual actions
- Various communication and dialogue techniques
The on-going tele-circles will be convened by Be the Change founder, Maureen Jack-LaCroix MA, and transformational facilitator, Cathryn Lecorre MEd.
Remember, in order to help others you must first help yourself. We invite you to step into your power as a leader by becoming a trained circle facilitator, empowering you to carry this important work forward within your own community. Together, we can co-create a future that is socially just, environmentally sustainable, and spiritually fulfilling for all!
- Click here to register! Includes a complementary PDF copy of the new 5th Edition Action Guide - an additional $15 value!
February 21 Celebrity Launch Information
We were deeply honoured to launch this series on Tuesday, February 21 with a powerful teleseminar featuring five women who have dedicated their lives to furthering the Great Turning. These powerful visionaries and wisdom elders shared their clear and compelling insights on the power that circles can bring to the social change movement of today:
- JOANNA MACY, PhD, visionary activist, teacher, facilitator, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory and deep ecology, author of Coming Back to Life and founder of The Work That Reconnects
- VICKI ROBIN, co-author of Your Money or Your Life, international speaker on downsizing consumption and co-founder of Conversation Cafés and Sustainable Seattle.
- JUANITA BROWN, co-author, The World Café, Bringing Conversations to Life, consultant and founder of Whole Systems Associates
- CHRISTINA BALDWIN, MS, master facilitator, author of Calling the Circle and The Circle Way, co-founder of Peer Spirit
- MAUREEN JACK-LACROIX, editor of the Be the Change Action Guide and founder of Be The Change Earth Alliance
Click here to download the MP3 audio recording of the teleseminar launch event!
Biographical Information
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, she has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.
Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her books Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (New Society Publishers, 1983); Dharma and Development (Kumarian Press, 1985); Thinking Like a Mountain (with John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess; New Society Publishers, 1988; New Society/ New Catalyst, 2007); Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (SUNY Press, 1991); Rilke's Book of Hours (1996, 2005) and In Praise of Mortality (2004) (with Anita Barrows, Riverhead); Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (with Molly Young Brown, New Society Publishers, 1998); Joanna's memoir entitled Widening Circles (New Society, 2000); World as Lover, World as Self (Parallax Press, 2007), A Year With Rilke, (with Anita Barrows, Harper One, 2009); and Pass It On: Five Stories That Can Change the World (with Norbert Gahbler, Parallax Press, 2010).
Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings. Her group methods, known as the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.
Joanna travels widely giving lectures, workshops, and trainings in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Australia. She lives in Berkeley, California, near her children and grandchildren.
Vicki Robin is co-author with Joe Dominguez of the national best-seller, Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence (Viking Penguin, 1992), available now in eleven languages. The official portal of the book connects readers to support materials for implementing the nine-step program and to the networks of educators and practitioners.
Vicki has lectured widely and appeared on hundreds of radio and television shows, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Good Morning America” and National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition” and “Morning Edition”; she has also been featured in People Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Woman’s Day, Newsweek, Utne Magazine and The New York Times. Newspapers around the world have reported on her work on lowering consumption in North America. Fluent in Spanish, she traveled to Europe in the spring of 1997 to introduce the Spanish translation of Your Money or Your Life. In Mayof 2002, she did an eight-day publicity tour in Taiwan for the Chinese release. Both trips resulted in Your Money or Your Life becoming a bestseller in those countries.
Called the prophet of “consumption-downsizers” by the New York Times, she is a frequent speaker on this issue at conferences; to corporate, academic, religious and environmental institutions; and at professional meetings of organizations seeking to understand and contribute to the national trend toward sustainable lifestyles.
Juanita Brown, the founder of Whole Systems Associates, collaborates as a thinking partner and design advisor to create and host forums for constructive dialogue on critical organizational and societal issues. With her partner David Isaacs, Juanita is the co-originator of the World Café, an innovative approach to large group dialogue which is rapidly spreading throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific Rim. The World Café is being used in a growing number of community, corporate, governmental, health, educational, NGO and church settings to access a higher collective intelligence in situations of entrenched conflict.
Juanita served as a Senior Affiliate at the MIT Sloan School's Organizational Learning Center where she participated as a member of the Core Team of the Center's Dialogue Project, one of the early research initiatives in this field. She has also served as an Associate with the Norwegian Center for Leadership Development, a Research Affiliate with the Institute for the Future and as program faculty at the John F. Kennedy University School of Management, the California Institute of Integral Studies, Columbia University, and the University of Monterrey, Mexico. She is a Fellow of the World Business Academy and has been honored in the World's Who's Who of Business and Professional Women.
Christina Baldwin is an eloquent and witty speaker and educator who integrates the spiritual journey and the practical path in her retreats and workshops. She has taught nationally and internationally since the mid-1970s, and has contributed classic books in the emerging bodies of knowledge around personal writing, group process and spirituality. Her first work, One to One: Self-Understanding through Journal Writing is a pioneering text that has remained in continuous print for a quarter of a century. Its sequel, Life's Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest, extended the art of journal writing to spiritual practice.
In the early 1990s, Baldwin began developing a group process methodology that led to the concepts presented in her ground-breaking work, Calling the Circle: The First and Future Culture. This book has introduced thousands of people to a practical, hands-on structure for convening their meetings in circle and tapping collective wisdom. She has taken this work to the heart of mainstream culture in North America, Europe, and Africa.
Now living on an island near Seattle, Washington, she and author/educator Ann Linnea manage PeerSpirit, offering a variety of consulting seminars, practica, and wilderness programs. Their clients include health care corporations; health care delivery teams: university administrations, faculties, and graduate student programs; church congregations and religious administrative offices; provincial government housing administrations; Federal Corrections administration; industrial manufacturing teams; software development staff and project teams.
In 2000 - 2001, with the Berkana Institute, Baldwin co-developed the international initiative From the Four Directions, presented at the Women in Lucent Leadership Conference, worked with the Race and Gender Institute at the University of North Carolina, and consulted with the Center for Nursing Leadership. When at home she adores the peace of island life: beach walking, bicycling, gardening and kayaking.
Maureen is the Creative Director of Be The Change Earth Alliance and Editor of the BTC Action Guide. A student and leader of group process in humanistic, cognitive and transpersonal psychology for 15 years, Maureen founded BTCEA after completing a Masters degree in Eco-Psychology through Naropa University. During her Masters’ studies she led professional development ‘circles’ for business owners and executives with ViRTUS, and completed facilitator training with Joanna Macy and the Pachamama Alliance.
Before devoting herself to sustainability education and citizen engagement in shifting world views, Maureen was the CEO of Jack of Hearts Productions creating TV specials and international events such as SLAM CITY JAM, the North American skateboard championships, MUSIC WEST Festival and TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH, Canada’s LiveAid initiative.
Cathryn is a transformational facilitator, change consultant and leadership coach. She is certified in several leadership development modalities including Human Systems Dynamics, Clear Leadership, Coaching out of the Box and Meyers Briggs. Cathryn is passionate about creating communities of awakened leaders and experienced in helping individuals and teams to access inner resources, align with purpose and realize their goals.
During the tele-seminar series Cathryn will share her pearls of wisdom from the four domains of transformational facilitation: connection before content, radical authenticity, hosting generative conversation, and leading change in complexity.