Shuswap Settlement Services Society invites the community to explore community development that is inclusive and respectful.
The Mandela Symposium: Respect Lives Here takes place March 5 and 6 and will introduce participants to a restorative approach that promotes taking accountability over placing blame, making a personal commitment over finding excuses, and building community over seeding discontent.
Shuswap Settlement Services and other community partners have been seeking a new model to replace an oftentimes retributive approach that seeks to establish blame and to lobby others with the authority to impose change.
The event will be facilitated by Charles Holmes, an educator who has worked with clients in health care, forestry and mining, software and pharmaceutical companies, educational institutions and utility firms, government and not-for-profit sectors.
Holmes is a co-founder and part-time associate with the Learning Strategies Group in the Faculty of Business at Simon Fraser University. He helped to establish the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education.
Holmes works closely with U.S. author and consultant Peter Block, whose work embraces empowerment, stewardship, accountability and community reconciliation.
The forum and workshop will feature Block’s latest book, Community: The Structure of Belonging.
Block extols the power that conversations in small gatherings between individuals of diverse interests but committed to a common goal can have in bringing about significant change.
Block will make a special guest appearance via Skype during a March 5 presentation by Holmes.
The following day, Holmes will facilitate a workshop coaching participants in the art of facilitating small group gatherings in a manner that engages the marginalized, builds community, respects differences, promotes personal accountability and fosters personal commitment.
The symposium is dedicated to the memory of Nelson Mandela, who championed the power of the individual to bring about change, the need to reach out to those who are socially marginalized, and to acknowledge and reconcile past injustices without abandoning a better future.
Respect Lives Here takes place in the auditorium of First United Church.
Members of the public are welcome to attend a presentation that takes place at 7:30 p.m. March 5.
Registration for the March 6 workshop is limited to 60 participants on a first-come-first-served basis. To register for the event, which runs 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., email someroses@shaw.ca or phone 250-804-2726.
The symposium is made possible, in part, through funding from the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia made available through the Thompson-Okanagan Respect Network.
