Category: Events 2024

Throughout April 2024, experienced facilitators from across the world have been brought together by the UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative in a major step towards creating a global healing alliance of community-rooted Collective Healing Facilitators.

The UNESCO Collective Healing Capacity Building Programme prepares participants to understand the key theoretical and methodological ideas underpinning the Collective Healing Initiative and builds their capacity to design and host bespoke Collective Healing Circles in their local communities.  

Thanks to the support and generosity of the Global Humanity for Peace Institute, Guerrand-Hermès Foundation and Fetzer Institute, the capacity building programme in April has brought together 25 participants from across 5 continents, including representatives from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Uruguay, USA, Mexico; Martinique & Guadeloupe; France, UK and Germany; and Kenya, Nigeria and Cameroon. The group includes voices from African, Afro-Caribbean, African-American, European-descent, and Indigenous communities. Participants engaged in a multi-lingual online space, with live simultaneous interpretation available in English, French, Spanish and Portuguese at all times. 

The online capacity building space is one which celebrates rich diversity, whilst also deeply acknowledging the shared experiences of loss, trauma and displacement which pervade the history of all cultures. Through experiential and dialogue-based sessions, participants have been guided through the four interlocking modules which form the structure for the collective healing circles: 1) Acknowledging our shared histories of dehumanisation and recognising their enduring legacies and harms​; 2) Restoring our sense of human wholeness and re-affirming our dignity​; 3) Strengthening relationships & deepening interconnectedness; and 4) Envisioning structural justice & activating our responsibilities for shared future(s). These modules work together to initiate and sustain collective healing within communities whose history has been characterised by structural dehumanisation, displacement, racism and inequality, towards a shared future of social justice and holistic wellbeing. 

As one of the team shared:

“This capacity building programme is so much more than a ‘training’; it is a space for mutual sharing and learning, where each participant is bringing their many years of experience and cultural treasure to the space. Each session opens and closes with a participant sharing a cultural practice or ritual from their community – we have shared poems, songs, Indigenous chants… Each of us feels honoured to be in the space together and we are building bonds and friendships that will sustain us and our communities for many years to come.” 

Following completion of the capacity building programme, participants will continue to develop community-rooted UNESCO Collective Healing Circles, with the ongoing guidance of experienced UNESCO Collective Healing Mentors. All participants completing this cycle will be awarded a UNESCO Collective Healing Initiative Certificate of Achievement in formal recognition of their role as UNESCO Collective Healing Circle Facilitators. A waiting list for participation in the next capacity building opportunity is already growing.