FAQs
Please follow the links below to find answers to questions you may have about our work and offerings. If you find your answer here, great! If not, please reach out and we'll do our best to get you answers and meet your interests.
-
Questions about our work
-
Questions about our upcoming offerings
-
Questions about possible financial support
-
Questions about our refund policy
-
Questions about our privacy policy
Our Work
What if our change effort is already underway? Can we still apply Living Collective Wisdom to strengthen our efforts?
Absolutely. Any change initiative must necessarily leverage and integrate unique histories, relationships, and resources that are already in place within a system or geographic area. Living Collective Wisdom provides an organizing framework to steward these layers of complexity into a coherent whole.
For example, C4CW came alongside Stanislaus Cradle to Career in Stanislaus County, California to help the initiative evolve into a next stage of action and impact. Our engagement was an early prototype of an academy, and included immersions, 1:1 ally sessions, and process design and facilitation grounded in Living Collective Wisdom. This support adapted to and built upon early engagement by Strive Together.
How does Living Collective Wisdom support a commitment to equity, inclusion, and belonging?
A capacity to embody core values, including equity, inclusion, and belonging is far less about compliance to external policies and far more about the quality of our relationships and ongoing engagement with one another. In our experience, living our commitments to equity, inclusion, and belonging and other core values requires deep individual and group interior work, disciplined commitment to conversation and often challenging dialogue, and courageous action in support of meaningful change.
The commitments and practices of Living Collective Wisdom, and particularly the Leadership core competency, help individuals and groups deepen their capacity for the interior work, challenging dialogues, and courageous action essential for sustained progress. This framework also helps groups assess when they may be devolving into collective folly, and learn how to hold the healing conversations and other engagements that can help transmute the effects of past folly and trauma, including the pernicious legacy and present reality of racism.
How does the Living Collective Wisdom framework help systems and communities become trauma and resiliency-informed?
In 2017, we designed and began facilitating a multi-year initiative focused on deepening a commitment across Los Angeles County to trauma and resiliency-informed systems change. During this initiative, we researched relevant systems change efforts from across the country, analyzed a wide range of resources related to trauma and resiliency, and engaged in conversations with senior leaders and others from systems across Los Angeles county to gauge resonance and readiness for systems-level change to address trauma and promote resiliency. The lessons learned and recommended actions from this initiative are summarized in the following documents:
Trauma and Resiliency: A Systems Change Approach Year 1 and 2 Executive Summary
Trauma and Resiliency: A Systems Change Approach Year 1 Report
Trauma and Resiliency: A Systems Change Approach Year 2 Report
Our research and findings from this initiative deeply influenced our development of Living Collective Wisdom: it is a trauma and resiliency-informed approach to community and systems change.
Here's a small illustration of this orientation. For most groups, there is a clear division between work and healing. Work is about what we do and create together. Healing is typically understood as something individuals do in specialized therapeutic contexts, or with friends and family, or in support groups organized specifically to promote individual healing—Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, or groups for cancer survivors.
Our understanding of collective folly, however, and the pervasiveness of individual and collective trauma, lead us to hold a different perspective: namely, that the movements of creation and healing are inextricably entwined. A group’s commitment to effect change in the world will best be served when it is joined by an equally insistent commitment to heal the collective wounds we have inflicted and suffered. Living Collective Wisdom is designed to help systems and communities learn how to tend to the needs of both creation and healing.
Our Upcoming Offerings
Immersions
When will you be holding your next Immersions and Intensives?
Our next Ally Immersion begins in March 2024 and our next Ally Intensive is currently scheduled for fall of 2024. If you want to find out about upcoming invitations, please sign up for our mailing list or check back here regularly.
What happens if I miss one of the online sessions?
We will record all of the online sessions, so if you have to miss one unexpectedly, you can view the recording to catch up. If you have to miss more than one or two of the online sessions, it might be best to register for a different Immersion.
What is the total time commitment required outside of the online sessions for each immersion and intensive?
A lifetime!
Ok, while that's true, let us try to answer this more directly. Immersions unfold over 2-3 months. While the seven half-day sessions are highly interactive, there are more exercises in the participant workbook than we can cover in these sessions, and mastering all of the commitments and practices takes ongoing practice. When possible, we highly recommend signing up in pairs or finding another participant to become your learning buddy to continue your engagement with the material after the immersion.
An Intensive is a longer and more layered process, unfolding over a nine-month period. In addition to the in-person, multi-day session, there are online sessions, 1:1 ally sessions, peer support circles, and additional group dialogues. Participants can expect to invest several hours a week over the course of this process beyond the in-person and online sessions. And … mastery of this way of being and acting in support of profound results really is a lifetime pursuit, which is why we are building an ongoing learning community of practitioners to continue supporting each other beyond their direct Immersion and Intensive experiences.
1:1 Ally Sessions
What is the difference between C4CW's 1:1 Ally Sessions and other coaching approaches?
There is a wide range of approaches to coaching in support of self development, leadership, and organizational performance. Our 1:1 Ally Sessions are specifically designed to deepen understanding of and embodiment of the commitments and practices of Living Collective Wisdom®.
These sessions are confidential and participant-driven: prior to their first session, a participant completes an online self assessment that helps promote customized support. The role of the C4CW ally in these sessions is to help cultivate a safe space for deep reflection, authentic dialogue, and a practice field for embodying the commitments and practices of Living Collective Wisdom® in support of your work in the world.
Possible Financial Support
Is there financial help available to participate in immersions and intensives?
We never want cost to be the reason someone cannot participate. We are approaching foundations and other potential donors to ask for funding for scholarships and other resources to help more people be able to join this movement for living collective wisdom.
In the meantime, if you are interested in any of our offerings and need financial support, please take a few moments to fill out a brief application and we’ll work with you to explore creative funding solutions.
And … if you are someone who can, we would welcome your donation to help us fund scholarships to support others who need financial help to participate. Thank you!
Is it possible to pay for Immersions and Intensives in installments?
PayPal offers options for installment payments if you choose to use pay using that service. We are working on additional options for installment payments for future offerings.
Is there financial support available to support a potential Academy?
We have had excellent success in identifying partner funders to support large-scale change efforts we have designed and led, including Academies. Please reach out to us if you are interested in pursuing an Academy and we will work with you to identify possible funding partners.
Our Refund Policy
We understand that, even with the best planning and intentions, life happens. At the same time, every cancellation affects our design and capacity to provide impactful experiences for participants. Further, space is limited in each Immersion and Intensive to help us ensure meaningful engagement, so short notice cancellations necessitate last-minute adjustments to the process design and may not make it possible for us to find another participant to fill the empty spot.
Given these interests, our refund policies are as follows.
For all offerings
-
All refund requests must be made in writing to welcome@c4cw.org. Any requested refund or credit is pending until you receive notice from our Registration Team that we have received and validated your request.
-
In case of last-minute emergencies outside of our refund windows, please contact us and we will work with you to arrange a credit toward a future offering.
For Immersions
-
Registered participants who request a refund up to three (3) weeks prior to the first day of an Immersion can either apply their payments to a future offering, or receive a full refund minus a fee of $150. This fee helps cover our direct processing costs.
-
We cannot offer refunds to registered participants who request cancellations less than two (2) weeks prior to the first day of an Immersion or who do not attend an Immersion.
For Intensives
Our Intensives are longer and more layered experiences than Immersions. Cancellations create considerable design challenges for us.
-
Registered participants who request a refund up to six (6) weeks prior to the first day of the Intensive can either apply their payments to a future offering, or receive a full refund minus a fee of $500.
-
Registered participants who request a refund between 2-6 weeks prior to the first day of the Intensive can either apply their payments to a future offering, or receive a full refund minus a fee of $1,500.
-
The fees help cover both our direct processing costs and the additional time needed to revise our process design.
-
We cannot offer refunds to registered participants who request cancellations less than two (2) weeks prior to the first day of an Intensive, or who do not attend an Intensive.
For 1:1 Ally Session series
A 1:1 Ally Session series comprises six (6) one-hour sessions. The series is designed as a whole, integrated process. As a result, our pricing and refund policies are oriented to a series of 6 sessions rather than individual sessions.
-
We cannot offer refunds to registered participants who request cancellations after they have begun their first 1:1 Ally Session.
-
Registered participants who request a refund before their first session commences, and who do not want to reschedule that session, can receive a full refund minus a fee of $150. This fee helps cover our direct processing costs.