director's note

There is plenty to do, for each one of us, working on our own hearts, changing our own attitudes, in our own neighborhoods. ~Dorothy Day

Nelsonville, Ohio is a small town nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Ohio, USA. There are less than 6,000 residents, which in some global cities might constitute a city block. The point of this story is not necessarily the location, the size of the town or the fact that many folks here love listening to country music. It is the undeniable fact that Nelsonville runs on heart energy. A few years back one of the residents, Dottie Fromal, inspired by the spirit and actions of the founder of the Catholic Workers Movement, Dorothy Day, decided she would start a community dinner.  She enlisted the help of 12 students and together they prepared a basic spaghetti dinner for the community. Word of the dinner spread. Dottie felt it was important that kids should sit down to have a meal with others once a week. The first Thursday about 25 kids came. The second week, the number more than doubled, and, soon it tripled, and before you knew it, kids were bringing parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Thursday nights grew to 350 people. Dinners included people sharing things for which they were thankful: a new tire, good grades, and one grandma announced how grateful she was to have received a new pair of dentures. The dinners started before COVID and continued during the pandemic as meals were carefully prepared and delivered to people's homes. 

Something started to happen in Nelsonville with these dinners. People were more generous and kinder to one another. They learned they liked to sing together after dinner. Sometimes the sheriff would drop by and found himself answering important questions, the governor heard about Nelsonville’s Thursday night dinners and dropped by a few times, helped serve food and even mopped up the floor once. Read more.

Gender Equity and Reconciliation International (GERI) Course begins April 23, 2022. Learn more and register here.

Can you imagine being part of a group of people who actually share their truth with each other - across the genders? A group of people who begin to re-invent our human future together—replacing our legacy of gender dysfunction with a new civilization of beloved community?

This carefully facilitated 7-week course creates a safe forum where we can awaken a deeper empathy and understanding and begin to discover practical pathways towards healing and transforming our relationships. Together we can begin to re-form relations between women and men, and people of all genders, without blame or shame, and move through the often unspoken, unconscious attitudes, fears and reactions around gender and sexuality, to reclaim the mutual harmony and reverence that is our birthright.

Join us for this interactive and experiential online course and embark upon a new form of spiritual healing and reconciliation work that builds trust and compassionate communication through a skillful combination of interactive activities, spiritual practice, and transformative group process. 

Register here.

Our capacity to collaborate and innovate together has been undermined by the increase in incivility, toxic behaviour and divisiveness in our homes, schools, workplaces, and the public square. This erodes our sense of belonging, community, and well-being. 

We need each other to address the complex challenges facing our communities and our cities – from aging infrastructure to climate change, homelessness, mental health and addiction issues among many others.

To thrive, our communities depend on our ability to revive the art of living and working well together. In this thought-provoking and inspiring course, you’ll be taken on a journey from “Bullyville,” a broken, toxic and divided community to “Sustainaville,” a safe, inclusive, thriving and resilient community.

The successful journey includes a renewal of pro-social human values and practices rooted in compassion, secular ethics, civic education and systemic culture transformation. 

Compassionate cities are made up of compassionate people. This course orients you and then provides you with practical tools to be the change. Learn more.

Trauma Informed Leadership with Thomas Hübl

April 26, 10:00 - 11:30 a.m. PDT/19:00 - 20.30 CET 

As leaders, we are called to raise our awareness of the multifaceted nature of trauma and understand its impact on us, our teams, and our work within our organizations and compassionate initiatives.

The Pocket Project, in partnership with the Charter for Compassion, is offering this 6-month course to develop trauma-informed awareness and strengthen our sources of resilience and sensitivity with the aim of opening up to an increased flow of information, creativity and impact.

This course will allow us to expand our awareness of our lives, our organizations and our relationship to the world to include movements that take place below the surface and give rise to our every-day experience. We often wish to free ourselves from recurring patterns of friction and find ways to express our love and service more genuinely and effectively. Instead of being caught in the symptoms, we aim to acquire the ability to turn our gaze to the unseen layers and trace back the lines of creation to their origins so that we become more able to integrate the past, fulfil our potential and create new opportunities and possibilities.

Earth Day Global Read with Marsel van Oosten

Friday, April 22 at 9am PDT.  Learn more and Register. 

MOTHER is a large-format nature photography book, showcasing Marsel van Oosten's personal favorites and his most popular and award-winning images from the past 15 years, taken on five continents: Africa, North America, Antarctica, Asia, and Europe. MOTHER is Marsel's personal visual ode to Mother Earth and a celebration of her incredible biodiversity.

Successful conservation starts with awareness, and Marsel hopes that the images in this book will reconnect people to nature, make them realize that Mother Earth desperately needs our protection, and inspire them to take action.

While MOTHER is primarily a large coffee-table-style photo book that aims to awe and inspire you, it is also a wake-up call. Marsel writes extensively about the various threats our planet is facing to show the situation is much more serious than people think. We need to do more about conservation, and we need to up our game fast before it's too late. The latest IUCN Red List confirms Marsel's alarmist views. The animals and wild places in MOTHER are what we stand to lose if we don't act now!

Conversation Collective Travel Series

Every Monday, 3 pm PDT and Thursday, 9 am PDT.  Learn more and Register.

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