Connecting transformative practitioners across the world
What: A virtual space to regularly gather, connect, and converse.
Who: Transformative practitioners who identify as members of the Black/African diasporic experience.
When: The 4th Friday of each month from 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. via Zoom
5/23, 6/27, 7/25, 8/22, 9/26, 10/24, 11/28 (last session)
Hosts: Barbara Cockerman & Jerry Mings
How to Participate: Register here, and receive reminders with the zoom link a few days before each of the scheduled sessions.
Basic Transformative Dialogue Training:
Who Needs to Talk to Whom about What and How?
Training Details:
This training is asynchronous. Upon registration you will receive access to a Google Classroom (GC) with all reading, videos, and homework. You will have the option to set up a call with one of the trainers if you'd like to ask questions or talk about any of the material.
This training provides participants with the basic understanding and skills to support people in communities and organizations in having meaningful and constructive conversations across differences; conversations that help change the quality of their interactions whether or not they agree at the end of the process.
Participants will:
Who the course is for:
This training is a significant revision of earlier trainings in transformative dialogue, so even if you have taken an earlier training there is much to learn here. New elements include expanded premises on identity and people in groups, incorporation of trauma-informed practice into the training, and centering discussions of race, culture and power in the training. Whether you are interested in organizing and facilitating conversations in your local community, or in your workplace or organization you belong to, or you are working in an area of ethnopolitical conflict, this training will be an excellent starting point for this work.
Coached Mediation Practice Group: The Co-Mediation Model, with Hannah Diamond
A great opportunity to practice your mediation skills in small group setting with a coach. These sessions will focus on mediating with a co-mediator using various role play scenarios.
Three sessions allows for time to play the roles of both a mediator and a party in the mediation. Group is limited to six participants.
1.September 12, 2025, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
2.September 19, 2025, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
3.September 26, 2025, 1:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Zoom link sent upon registration.
Child Inclusive Mediation, with Robin Brzobohaty and Martina Cirbusová
This training will cover the following:
• What is the purpose of involving children in mediation?
• What is scientific evidence behind this practice?
• How to involve children in mediation - 18 different options will be introduced.
• How to provide feedback from the child to parents during mediation? Video sample.
• What techniques and tools are available?
There will also be discussion about: • Key hallmarks of good practice.
• Ethics of this particular practice.
• Guidelines for professionals interested in this type of mediation, including steps and how to get started.
September 30, 9 am - 3 pm Eastern
Zoom link will be sent upon registration!
Inside Out Practice Group, with Robin Brzobohaty and Martina Cirbusová
Would you like to practice your mediation skills but prefer to have an experience where you will analyze how mediation works rather than be the one who is under the pressure of being analyzed?
We do have a special practice session for you!
During this three hour session you will have the opportunity to see how mediators work and analyze their work - ask questions about their intentions, discuss their interventions, and have an opportunity to understand how they read the weaknesses and self-absorption of parties and why they offer specific interventions to the parties. You will have a chance to pause the mediation any time you will need, come back to specific situations, and analyze them in more detail.
*If you attended this workshop in the past, know that there will be a new video analyzed this time!
October 10, from 9 am -12 pm Eastern
prerequisite: basic transformative mediation training
Check-In’s: The Art of Asking Non-Directive Questions, with Robin Brzobohaty and Martina Cirbusová
Asking questions is a powerful tool through which parties can regain the reins of the conversation and restore their agency. As transformative practitioners, we ask questions in the form of the check-in intervention. The challenge, however, is how not to misuse questions to dominate the conversation or be one step ahead of the parties, leading them toward predefined objectives. This workshop will offer a deep analysis of this essential tool of the transformative practitioner in terms of proper delivery and possible positive and negative consequences of asking questions on the self-determination of the participants. Thus, the workshop will focus on the skill of asking questions in a way that maintains the fulfillment of all the premises of the transformative approach.
In a 3 hour workshop participants will learn:
What is the difference between content and process questions
How does asking both types of questions influence the conversation and self-determination
How to ask questions in tune with the premises of transformative practice
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