Australian Nonviolence Network The following is the second of our regular reports from the Centre for Nonviolence at Commonground. We want as many of you who are connected with nonviolence in Australia to be associated with this exciting project. Background At the last few Australian nonviolence gatherings there has been increasing talk about the need for the Australian Nonviolence Network (ANN) to become more "organised". People felt there was a need to define the network, to identify and own its aims, and to find ways of working together to achieve them. Together with this we wanted to be able to communicate more and to support one another better. We wanted to create opportunities for exploring nonviolence practice in our whole lives and to promote nonviolence and improve its profile in the community. In response to this need, at the 1993 gathering, Commonground Community offered space for the Centre for Nonviolence to be set up. The gathering also requested the Melbourne network to appoint a facilitation collective to establish and run the centre as one step in this process. Network facilitation Facilitation means to make easy the wishes of a group and to assist their processes to go well rather than to run things according to one's own plan. This is why we thought that Network Facilitation Collective was the correct title for the new centre collective. Two centre coordinators, in conjunction with the collective will attempt to facilitate the wishes of the ANN. We will need your involvement as members to make this possible. Aims and objectives Primarily we have been thinking a lot about what we see are the aims and objectives of the facilitation collective. They are still open for modification and evolution so that we always have something that the Network as a whole is happy with. Below is what we are up to with this. The collective will help facilitate the workings of the ANN. We will be a central contact point. If you would like to be more in touch with events, movements, news, people, and ideas either within your bioregion, or nationally, or if you would like to let others know what you are doing, you can contact us. And you can contact us to find who are key contact people for different areas. We can find out what is going on within the ANN, and also inform others of your activities. We will facilitate communication between people within the ANN and the wider community. We can help if you would like to keep more in touch with what is happening both in Australia and globally and if you want to tell others working for nonviolence about your achievements and ideas, and get feedback. This will include connecting with other social change groups outside the network. We will help you connect with each other as appropriate and where the need arises. And we will help facilitate and maintain connections with global nonviolence networks by channelling stories and resources back and forth from overseas. We will facilitate the development of the ANN by organizing and distributing relevant information that people need to support and develop their work. We can help you find contacts, information, materials and resources to support and develop your work. In collaboration with nonviolence educators around Australia, we hope to develop a collection of resources such as books, videos and workshop materials including case-studies and handouts. We will perform the administrative and financial tasks necessary to keep the collective and the centre operating. This will not only make life easier for the coordinators but make the centre a viable and realistic project. It will also serve as a model for future "embryonic centres". If you need to know how these sorts of things work we can help you. We will provide guidelines and support for the centre coordinators. There will be two centre coordinators to run the centre on a day-to-day basis. They will be members of the facilitation collective and one at least will be able to live at Commonground. The collective will help them prioritise their work. The collective will promote nonviolence in the community and facilitate nonviolence education. We will provide promotional and publicity support for the activities of nonviolent activists. This includes helping you with publicity, to get information and gain support for your projects. We will provide personal support to individual activists. This may include providing information about affinity groups, workshops, campaign strategy, nonviolent households and communities, as well as support for setting up debriefings, and think tanks. We can help individuals to find the right person to talk to about a particular problem. We will help to promote nonviolence education and directly support program organizers and facilitators. This means providing information on how to run a successful workshop. This might include, putting you in contact with potential participants, facilitators, organisers and suggesting possible venues, as well as providing resources and facilitating skillshares. The collective will manage the relationship between the ANN and Commonground. We will facilitate the use of Commonground as a place for network members to use for workshops, reflection and time out. The collective will be guided and directed by the ANN. We are thinking of the ANN as anybody with an active interest in the promotion of nonviolence as a culture and social change philosophy. We will be especially accountable through the annual National Gathering, but also through the phone link up and bioregional groups. Where we are up to The national facilitation collective has now met four times for full day meetings. We are enjoying cozy meetings in front of raging Commonground fires. Each of us has interstate contacts who help the project by feeding us with the needs and expectations of the activists in their area. In turn we make friendly phone calls to them so they know what we're up to and how are we responding to them. The national phone link ups are also a place you can connect with us; and through NvT or other local communication rags. There are a few other things we have started... 1. A mailing list so that we can send out easily a big "WE ARE HERE" pamphlet and letter to interested persons and groups. And to help facilitate communication among us in the future. 2. We have space at Commonground which we're gradually setting up and will move into in September. We want to build a firm foundation and be prepared for the network growing over the next few years. We also want to create a nice space in which to work. 3. We are painstakingly preparing a pamphlet that will invite people to use the centre. We want to make a really attractive pamphlet that presents nonviolence as a serious social change philosophy. 4. We are already responding to requests for workshop support. On one hand we are researching funding possibilities and on the other we are arranging for workshop facilitators to travel interstate to run workshops. 5. The coordinators, Kate Kelly and Margaret Pestorius are also keeping an ear to the ground about what's going on in the nonviolence field around Australia and overseas. We've made a commitment to keeping in touch with you to keep the information flow going both ways. There are three main ways to connect. (a) through the phone link up (b) through direct communication (phone calls, letters) between collective members and our regional contact people (see below for a list of our regional contact people) (c) through NvT and other regional magazines and newsletters. 6. We have put together a preliminary budget. Because of the support we are receiving from Commonground, the base costs (for stationery, phone, travel reimbursement etc.) amount to only about $3000 each year. On top of this we may have extra 'project' costs. So we are working on a total budget of $5000 per year. In the future we hope to build resources (books, magazines, videos etc.) that can be used by the Network in Australia. At the 1993 gathering the go-ahead for the centre was given along with the commitment of many present to support the project financially. Enough was pledged there to enable us to decide that the project was viable. We are all enthusiastic and optimistic about the potential of the centre. But it depends in every way on the relationship between the collective and the wider nonviolence community. Financially, we can't manage without people's support. Included as an insert in this edition of NvT, is information on how you can support the project. Our needs We also have some non-financial needs for setting up the Centre. * We would like you to send us relevant addresses for the mailing-list. There are four categories. a) Members of ANN b) Other (relevant!) organisations in Australia (eg. interested social change groups) c) Nonviolence organisations overseas d) Bioregional key contact people. * We would love a fax machine. Upon negotiation, the residents at Commonground will welcome network members for "activist exchange". A combination of centre and Commonground activities can be negotiated. We are looking forward to network members coming and visiting, contributing directly to the development of the centre. Little about this project is set in concrete. We hope to continue to hear your ideas, your fears and hopes for the centre and network. And we hope to entwine your feedback in the directions we choose. Keep in touch. The network facilitation collective members and their regional contact people Margaret Pestorius - Bryan Law (Cairns), Jan McNicol (Brisbane). Kate Kelly - Louise Finnegan, James Langley (Sydney). David Alderson - Philip White (Adelaide). Robert Burrowes - Brian Martin (Wollongong), Jack Lomax (Tasmania), Peter Jones (Tasmania), Ralph Summy (Brisbane). Glen Alderson- Patsy Molloy, Jo Vallentine (Perth). Kay Websdale. If you live in a different region from the above contact people and would like to be more directly in touch with us, please contact Margaret (057) 938257 or Kate (03) 482 1839. Please mark in your diaries, April 23-25, 1994 for the Annual Gathering of the Australian Nonviolence Network at Commonground Seymour (near Melbourne), Victoria.