Daring to dream

Hello! It's two of us - Aušrinė and Ieva. We met in the professional field while facilitating strategic gathering of school community and continued our friendship not only in professional but also in personal life - we became friends. Like really close friends, you know. Dreaming together, sitting by the river during inner work sessions, working together and even studying Process Work together. And now - dreaming of going to Canada in May 2020.

We are two professionals wishing to advance in our field of work and interest (and dare we say - life in general). By participating in WorldWork conference, we have intention to accumulate the knowledge and experience of conflict facilitation and bring this experience back to our country.

The WorldWork Paradigm offers us a number of fresh perspectives:

• Chaos: moments of chaos are valued.
• Learning: worldwork expects conflicts to be our most exciting teacher.
• Open Heart: worldwork uses fire's heat to create community.
• Self-knowledge: worldwork stresses recognition that we ourselves are part of every conflict around us.
• The Unknown: respect it. [A.Mindell, "Sitting in a Fire"]

The WorldWork conference is an experiential training in conflict work, facilitation and community building. The conference provides a unique opportunity for people from around the world to come together in a powerful forum for focusing on and working with social, environmental, and political issues using group process. Between three to five hundred people, from thirty to forty countries, participate in this 5 day gathering. These days include theoretical and experiential training in large group settings, where a variety of issues relevant to the group and the world are processed.

Deep Democracy suggests that all voices, states of awareness, and frameworks of reality are important. Deep Democracy also suggests that all the information carried within these voices, levels of awareness, and frameworks is needed to understand the complete process of a system. This type of awareness can be focused on groups, organizations, one's own inner experiences, people in conflict, etc. Allowing oneself to take seriously seemingly unimportant events and feelings can often bring unexpected solutions to both group and inner conflicts.

Just as conventional democracy strives to include all individuals involved in the political process, Deep Democracy goes a step further in the effort towards fostering a deeper level of dialogue and inclusiveness that makes space for all people (with the individual right to vote) as well as all various and competing views, tensions, feelings, and styles of communication - in a way that supports awareness of relative rank, power, and privilege, and the potential of these forces to marginalize other views, individuals, and groups.

Money, that we will fund-raise, will be used to get us to Vancouver, Canada, cover travel and accommodation expenses and moreover - cover our participation in both workshop by Arny and Amy Mindell and the main WorldWork conference.

We are asking for support from all of our community in order to achieve this goal, to become better facilitators and to be able to serve our community here in Lithuania and around better.