Learn About Past Initiatives

  • "I enjoyed discussing the differences of cultural backgrounds and how this might affect the way people in our lives might respond to this kind of communication. It felt affirming to have this recognised."

    Healthy Communication Workshop Participant

  • "I learned that so many others feel the way I do trying to have an understanding as to why queer relationships have another layer of complexity and a clearer understanding of what’s healthy and what isn’t healthy when it comes to relationships."

    Healthy Queer Relationships Workshop Participant

  • "I thought about how what I want from a relationship changes. That it is impossible to separate platonic from romantic, and that gives communication a bigger role. But at the same time that means exposing your vulnerability. It is hard to approach this. But the key is platonic and romantic. Talk about what it means to you."

    Healthy Friendships Workshop Participant

  • "I took away [from the workshop] that so many others feel the way I do trying to have an understanding as to why queer relationships have another layer of complexity and a clearer understanding of what’s healthy and what isn’t healthy when it comes to relationships."

    Healthy Queer Relationships Workshop

Past Workshops

We have delivered 15+ workshops to 500+ participants so far!

Healthy Friendships

In this workshop, we treat the warmth of friendship as a key setting for conflict transformation. Often, our most intimate communities are where we feel the effects of structural and cultural violence most acutely through isolation, misrecognition, or unaddressed conflict.

By practicing the skills of boundary-setting, transformative consent, and resilient communication, we can use positive peace to improve our personal lives with grassroots peacebuilding. We explore how to navigate the intricacies of interpersonal relationships and love without conforming to normative binaries or hierarchies that place romantic or sexual love above other kinds, using relationships of all kinds as opportunities to create more just and connected communities.

Participants explore connection, kinship, and community and leave with an expanded view of individuals’ responsibilities to themselves and others.

Healthy Queer Relationships

We developed this workshop in response to the disproportionate rates of partner violence in queer relationships. Over the course of 1-2 hours, participants move beyond the “problem stories” of queer life and are invited to imagine and design what healthy queer love could look like, based on non-violent communication and healthy relationship traits. By unpacking the subconscious scripts that we have inherited about love and power, we can understand what a healthy relationship could look like, how to take the parts of what we have learned that feel helpful and leave those that are harmful.

Lessons from this workshop are not specific to romantic and sexual relationships; they are applicable to friendships, family relationships, and more. Think of this as a queer-specific version of the healthy friendships workshop, with an added exploration of the root causes of violence and conflict in queer communities (from individual to systemic).

Peaceful Communication

This workshop in a deep-dive of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to replace moralistic judgments and demands with a radical focus on unmet needs.

Through feedback moments and pair shares, we practice the four pillars of NVC: making observations without evaluation, identifying the somatic feelings in our bodies, uncovering our underlying needs, and making specific, actionable requests. Instead of achieving a perfect, conflict-free relationship, romantic or otherwise, this workshop invites participants to move past volatility and sabotage of unhealthy patterns and toward a culture of equality, healthy conflict, and mutual respect. By the end, participants leave with a backup plan for resolution and the tools to turn their individual connections into the building blocks of a resilient community.

Supporting Safe Narratives & Storytelling

This workshop recognizes that part of building peaceful communities is creating an environment where everyone feels safe, supported, and recognized. Here, we take participants through the steps to best support those around them in living authentically, and give practical tools and strategies to be a good listener and safe person. Drawing on years of experience in rape crisis and survivor support, as well as young persons’ education and outreach, we discuss principles of active and reflective listening, narrative development, and interpersonal support.

Participants also get the opportunity to reflect on groups or relationships where they have felt most supported and unpack why and how a particular setting helped them feel comfortable to be themselves.

Other past workshops include Boundaries, Gender Roles, Sex Education for Adults, Queer Sex & Relationship Education, and Conflict Transformation in Education.