What is Collective Voices?


Collective Voices exists to help people reconnect, repair, and rebuild their relationships and communities.

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 Our mission is to interrupt cycles of conflict, misunderstanding, isolation, and violence, 

to respond in ways that do not perpetuate harm, 

and to offer support for grief, loss, celebrations, and transitions.

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    In communities and groups where conflict, misunderstanding, and fractured safety and trust
are often at the forefront, Collective Voices’ work is a critical response. 
We help to rebuild the relational infrastructure
necessary for organizations and communities to thrive through conflict, loss, and change. 

 

The work we do focuses on building the capacity within individuals, groups, and communities ​to break silence
and patterns of conflict - to talk about what matters, to hear what matters to others,
to humanize and respect differences, and to find a durable path forward.

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Collective Voices offers a compassionate, trauma-informed, and culturally-relevant
approach to  justice, conflict, grief, loss, harm, and healing.

Our services include: trainings, consulting, and implementation support around restorative practices programming

and peacebuilding; facilitation of conflict, repair, grief, loss, transition, and change; teaching and practicing strategies and tools that support groups to function more effectively and that reduce conflict and misunderstandings and loss of trust; individual grief support services; and community healing.

 

Our work is grounded in a restorative framework.
Restorative practices (RP) are a philosophy, a set of values, a methodology,

and a radically transformational way of being in the world (as opposed to just being a curriculum.)
 

RP can be used both proactively to build trust, safety, community, and accountability
and as a response to misunderstandings, isolation, grief, conflict, harm, and violence.


 

Peacemaking Circles are a the most common process used in restorative practices programming.

The values of RP lie at the heart of every process Collective Voices uses.

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Collective Voices’ addresses the inequities and the constructs of various systems
that disrupt, disconnect, and destabilize the health of a community.

Our services are applicable in the following settings: workplaces settings of all types,
Tribal communities, First Responder agencies, individuals, families, couples,
friendships, governments, unions, and neighborhoods.

 

“I must say, I was profoundly moved by the mission and spirit of Collective Voices. The work you're doing -
from embedding Circles in Tribal schools to addressing the profound isolation and grief in our communities -
is exactly what the field of restorative practices needs. It's practical, heartfelt, and deeply necessary.”    
~ Member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation

There is no replacement for healthy connection to address feelings of isolation, hopelessness, and insignificance.

Whether your community wishes to celebrate together, or has endured a natural disaster, has violence on the streets,
or your workplace has tension.....

Collectives Voices creates opportunities for people to come together to talk, listen, grieve, celebrate, and be together. 

 

 

Collective Voices honors the Zulu origins of 'Sawubona' and strives to practice it in our work and everyday lives. 

 

“In Zulu, a common greeting is the word ‘Sawubona.’  
It roughly translates to ‘I see you’, as in, ‘I acknowledge your presence.
By acknowledging you, I bring you into existence and your acknowledgement of me, brings me into existence.’
In Zulu, the failure to acknowledge others is to literally threaten their existence."

 

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"Most of us have been educated from birth to judge, compete, demand, and diagnose – to think and communicate in terms of ‘right’ and ‘wrong.’ Thinking and interacting this way can create misunderstanding and a host of other problems, and ultimately brings us further from our naturally empathetic state.”       

~ Marshall Rosenberg, American psychologist, mediator, author, and teacher