Af Irmtraud Kauschat

May 6th 2013

Dear all,

I was invited as a representative of CNVC to the celebration of 20 years of NVC in Belgium on May 1st. I would like to share the speech I held about questions around the transition of CNVC as I received feedback of gratitude for asking these questions and encouragement for this path from many participants of the celebration meeting. I would like to see this as an incentive for further discussion with all of you.

With care

Irmtraud

Personally I am very happy to be with you today because I like to connect with my colleagues around the world and especially with you, my neighbors. And I am happy about you having invited me as a member of the CNVC board to celebrate the 20th anniversary of NVC in Belgium to represent CNVC. I assume that you appreciate the existence of CNVC. This nourishes my hope that we will be able to find shared interest and work together to create a thriving and vibrant community – especially after years of hardship and pain for many trainers because of disconnection with CNVC. CNVC was founded to serve Marshall in organizing his training activities, to support his dreams of spreading NVC and thus to contribute to Nonviolence and peace by creating projects come true. At the same time through introducing certification and the commitment of certified trainers to the vision, mission and aims of CNVC an expectation of belonging and community was raised in the trainer community that could not be met by the organization and maybe was never intended. This created much pain and mistrust over the years. Now CNVC and the community are at a critical point. Marshall has withdrawn from being an active trainer. During 2012 the members of the CNVC board have worked with his lawyers on an agreement that would allow CNVC and the trainer community to continue spreading NVC in the world as we used to. In October we received an email donating CNVC the gift of continuing to offer IITs in Marshall’s sense and an endorsement for our work. This was a relief because we did not need to work on lawyer created agreements of many pages any more. Now we can turn our awareness and efforts to connecting with the NVC community to co-create an organization that serves the purpose of our common vision and the needs of trainers as well. We need to decide together with the community many topics:

  • How could CNVC and the community connect with each other? How could the English and French speaking community
 connect with each other?
  • How could inclusive decision making look like, which kind of structures would support us in this?
  • Do we want to “throw everything in the air” that exists now, to start afresh considering the role of CNVC and the trainers and the trainer community? We might even end up with the same 
strategies – the difference would be the energy with which we implement the strategies, because WE will OWN the strategies

This might mean:

  • Do we want to continue to have CNVC as a charity in the USA with a board and an office as we are used to?
  • Do we want to have regional centers as had been suggested by the GCC in 2010? How can we recognize organizations that already exist.
  • How will we deal with certification and the commitment to CNVC, which comes with it? How can we include people in countries of poor economies to become certified trainers – like in Africa? Would we need to amend the process to regional conditions? How can we deal with the situation that an IIT is required for certification and many candidates don’t get visas to attend an IIT in Europe or the USA? How can candidates meet their assessors for the assessment?
  • Would there be an option for people to commit themselves to CNVC without becoming a Certified Trainer and meet their need for belonging to the international community?
  • Do we want CNVC to continue offering IITs in the way it is offering now – as a prerequisite to certification? Would we like to have IITs in terms of “Train the Trainers”? How would IIT trainers be selected?
  • How would CNVC and maybe regional centers be financially sustainable?
  • What kind of service would support spreading NVC and peace building all over the world?
  • How could we create synergies in our effort towards peace building in collaborating with other organizations?

I am sure that there are many more questions like this “out there” I can’t even think of. I would like us to collect them. Maybe we don’t have answers to these questions (right now) and nevertheless it is important to ask them. I would like us to create a space where each question is welcome.