White Folks' Work

People Development is honoured our associate Maureen St. Clair and her colleague Nelly Marcoux are again offering their powerful workshop,

White Folks Work: Awakening to our Whiteness, Embodying Radical Responsibility, starting March 18th.

As Maureen has written in her blog, “We are all born into collective traumatic systems, that have bored into our bodies, minds and hearts. We have to actively, critically, and compassionately engage in seeing, naming and changing ourselves and the systems we are intricately a part of.”

( https://maureenstclair.wordpress.com/ ). When we look at the world around us it is clear the time to engage in this deep internal and external work is now.

In discussing the course Maureen writes,

“None of us white folks are exempt. Not even if you’ve travelled the world and have been in community with the most powerful sages and seers; not even if you are married to a Black, Indigenous, People of Color man or woman and raising BIPOC children, not even if you’ve been adopted/married into a BIPOC community/religion/culture; not even if you’ve come out with a PHD in race relations or taken a million diversity trainings. This work is ours still. This is a lifetime of dismantling centuries of systems that are deeply woven within us as a white race. This is a lifetime of unlearning, re-learning, and inner and outer learning!”

People Development is proud to be able to collaborate with Maureen and Nelly on this important 6 part online series.

In this series participants will:

• explore, unpack, and work to change our embedded racial patterns using critical self-reflection and the heart-centered practices of the Compassionate Listening Project;

• practice interrupting racism while coaching one another;

• learn how to work with our triggers by building stamina, resilience and capacity to stay with discomfort;

• strive to move from shame and guilt to responsibility and solidarity;

• explore how to hold ourselves accountable, work to repair harm, act in solidarity and build authentic relationships to and with our BIPOC (Black, indigenous, people of colour) brothers and sisters;

• commit to working towards transformative justice and sustainable action

In commenting on the successes of previous offerings in late 2020 Maureen wrote,

“People made lifelong commitments in building brave spaces; compassionately listening and holding one self and others as we walk this path of courage and commitment to disrupt, dismantle, unlearn, relearn and transform white supremist systems that live in and outside all of us.”

Past participants praised the series:

“Maureen and Nelly show the way forward in engaging fully within this transformative work. They have demonstrated to all of us the courage and the strength to disrupt racial conditioning and biases that live in all of us, and shared of themselves their deep heartfelt solidarity with the statement, ‘None of us are free until all of us are free!’ If you don’t know the facilitators, you are in for a treat.”

Maureen St.Clair, is an artist, peace educator, community facilitator, conflict resolution trainer, activist, writer and life-long learner (www.maureenstclair.com) . Born and raised in Canada, with Grenadian citizenship, she has lived and worked in Grenada, West Indies for over 25 years. She is deeply passionate about connections, entanglements, intersections, unravelling and weaving of relationships and the power of deep receptive compassionate listening in transforming interpersonal and community-based conflict. As a collaborator, she co-creates brave inclusive spaces enabling people collectively to do the work of self and community building and healing with a social justice and trauma informed lens. View a video of Maureen talking about her work in conflict transformation at https://youtu.be/4BNxXiR1wYo

Nelly Marcoux has been working in support of Indigenous struggles and social justice in Guatemala and Turtle Island (in what is now called Québec, Canada) for over 15 years as a volunteer and in a professional capacity. With a background in law and graduate studies in Indigenous Governance, she is seeking to firmly ground her work in right relations and transformative approaches to social justice. She is currently based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), on unceded Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) territory, and works for a local Indigenous government.

The online workshop White Folks' Work: awakening to our whiteness, embodying radical responsibility is:

· Six consecutive Thursdays

· March 18, 2021 to April 22, 2021

· 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm EST

· Suggested contribution $175. (Percentage donated to BIPOC Programs / Movements. Sliding scale available.)

· To register and for more information: mstclairrespect@gmail.com