Network Facilitation The Network Facilitation Collective, Kay, Jo, Glen, Rob and travelling Margaret, continue to meet to look at how best to support the nonviolence network around Australia. One of the highlights of the May and June meetings has been planning how to spend the $8,000 kindly given to the Centre for Nonviolence by the Lance Reichstein Foundation. Rob has done thorough work writing submissions and an article for the Philanthropy Journal about the Australian Nonviolence Network (ANN). We're enjoying the novelty of having spending money and are researching which brand of photocopier, laser printer and fax machine to buy. This office equipment will help provide resources for, and help communicate with, the ANN. As for the ongoing finances of the Centre, pledges and donations have been few in number recently, but have been generous. We are covering expenditure costs. Thank you to all those who have helped the Centre financially. The two resource coordinators of the Centre, Kay and Jo, have organised a "Day in the Centre", which is coming up soon. The aim of this day is to gather a small team to work with the resource coordinators in running the Centre. At the moment, Jo and Kay each work (unpaid) two days a fortnight and this is really only enough to do maintenance jobs. We need more workers so we can put more energy into bigger projects, such as organising all the nonviolence resources in the library, and so on. There is still a lot of work to do in establishing the Centre in preparation for the nonviolence boom we are predicting! The other exciting step the collective has made is our decision to 'Pay the Rent' to a local Aboriginal group to acknowledge our gratitude for the use of Aboriginal land for the Centre at Commonground. We have also spent time sharing excitement about current nonviolent events around Australia and the media coverage this has been attracting - and the hundreds of people being attracted to nonviolence. There's the Save Albert Park Campaign in Victoria, the Kuranda Sky-Rail Campaign in Queensland and big forest blockades in Western Australia... (see the phone link-up report for a summary of nonviolent action happening in Australia at the moment). We have started thinking about how to meet the demand for large scale nonviolence training in several places in Australia. We also reviewed our interstate contacts and have identified gaps in Canberra, Darwin, Alice Springs and Sydney - so if there are any nonviolence types in these areas or in any other unusual location(!), we'd love to hear from you to strengthen our networking. The collective has been keeping in contact with its outreach member, Margaret (hello Margaret) while she's campaigning up north and for all those living in Darwin, Alice Springs and Adelaide, Margaret will be happy to meet people and share nonviolence skills and resources in late August, early September. The Centre has been running smoothly with day to day maintenance being done - filing, banking, accounts, correspondence... We have decided to subscribe to Nonviolence Today, Peace News and Reconciliation International. We've had several requests for the Centre's pamphlet and the introductory nonviolence workshop kits - and these are still available for those interested. Well, that's it. Please ring or write to the Centre if you need support for your nonviolence venture. Jo Barter