Restorative Resources---Making It Right

Restorative Communities

 

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Jane Addams

 

We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting community gardens or looking out for our neighbors. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occuring simultaneously.

Grace Lee Boggs

 

Restorative Communities link skilled circle keepers with community groups as diverse as commercial businesses, faith-based groups, non-profits, government and more. Circle keepers use the unique power of restorative circles to help groups that are involved in conflicts, planning, internal organizational development, celebrations, and many other purposes. The result: individuals perspectives transformed into group wisdom; communities that learn and grow.

Restorative community builders focus on two broad outcomes:

1. Creating opportunities for community members to build and strengthen mutually supportive and respectful relationships; and

2. Creating opportunities for community members to solve problems, address challenges, and heal relationships when things are not right.

Our Objectives

  1. Expand membership in the Sonoma County Restorative Justice Coalition and provide continuing leadership to its ongoing development.
  2. Establish a new service—Restorative Circle Connections—to connect trained circle keepers to organizations seeking creative, positive resolutions to conflict.
  3. Intensively train a pilot group of Circle Keepers and deploy them through the Restorative Circle Connections project.

 

Community Buildling Circles are useful for:

  • Neighborhoods
  • Churches
  • Businesses
  • Collaboratives
  • Committees
  • Schools
  • Families
  • Activist Groups
  • Organizations
  • Campfires
  • Boardrooms
  • Crises
  • Planning
  • Evaluating
  • Celebrating
  • Problem Solving
  • Troubleshooting
  • Learning
  • Debriefing
  • Healing
  • and much more...