9 day intensive NVC training
Building bridges – European Summer Academy Training and Immersion in Nonviolent Communication

Building Bridges
9 days European Summer Academy Training and Immersion in Nonviolent Communication

For whom?

• For beginners and people with NVC knowledge

About the training:

This training is meant as an intensive introduction to Nonviolent Communication with the focus on how to integrate your learnings in your daily life. This means that you would be  willing to go through processes related to your own experiences e.g., as a parent, child of your parents, with your partner, situations in your workplace.

One important aspect is empathy: you open your heart for yourself in the self-empathy process, for others by listening with empathy to their challenges. With this you create connection with yourself and others and live more peacefully.

There is a list of topics we can use for exploring the gift that NVC has for you (please see below). At the same time, it is more important for the trainer to relate to what you bring with you than ticking off topics.We will create the content of the training to get her as we go.

Possible topics:

For each topic there will be a short theoretical input, time for questions and answers, and exercises. The exercises are very important to experience and integrate the learnings. You will mainly work with your own real-life situations.

• introduction to Nonviolent Communication (NVC)
• the 4 steps/components: observation, feelings, needs, requests
• steps to empathic listening
• Self-empathy as a way for self-care
• Empathy for the other person
• Expressing myself authentically
• Dealing with anger – how to express my anger, how to receive someone else’s anger
• Saying “no”
• Hearing “no”, hearing the “yes” behind the “no”, not taking a “no” personally
• Transforming limiting beliefs
• Taking responsibility
• Appreciation and gratitude
• How to continue
• Going back in daily life

Irmtraud and Olena welcome questions at anytime.

Link for the application form

Irmtraud Kauschat lives in Germany and works as a trainer for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC) for more than 25 years. She realized that peace starts within us:

“How do I communicate with myself? Do I blame myself as stupid, incompetent…? Or do I try to connect with the needs I tried to meet when I acted like I did and now I am not in peace with the result. How it affected my connection with others?”
Irmtraud grew up in post-war Germany with guilt and shame about the German history. NVC supported her to differentiate between guilt/shame and responsibility. It is out of this responsibility and being inspired by Marshall’s work that she chose to share NVC also in regions of conflict like Kenya, Israel /Palestine, Ukraine, and Somalia to support reconciliation and social change. It is important to her to contribute to a world where everybody’s needs matter, to get to know about the privileges she has and to be curious how she can use them in a collaborative way with people who have less access to resources

Olena Melnyklives in Odessa, Ukraine. She has been practicing Nonviolent Communication since 2014 and became a certified trainer (NVC) in 2022. Olena brings NVC into her life step by step. She shared it with teachers, parents and their children, in organizations and local communities and sees the power that comes back to people when they realize their needs.The realization that all people have the same needs can bring changes in our live. It allows us look kindly at ourselves, allow to have our needs met and talk about them with dignity and satisfy them. Also, we can increase our abilities to be in touch with people with strong emotions, acknowledge these emotions and support the person emphatically. Olena belongs to “Empathy Ukraine”, a community of Nonviolent Communication practitioners that has provided individual and group online empathic support to Ukrainians since 2020, the period of the global pandemic, and especially since 2022, when Ukraine is defending itself during a full-scale war.

Location: Lozen, (1151 село Лозен), about 30 min outside of Sofia. Link to the venue, with many photos

Time: August 31st – September 9th, 2023 at 9:30 –13:00, 14:30–18:00.

We will decide together on meetings in the evening.

Accommodation:

• Single rooms @38 Leva
• 6 twin rooms @30 Leva per person
• 1 triple room @25 Leva per person
• Residential, local participants can also commute

Meals:

• Breakfast: 8 Leva
• Lunch: 12 Leva
• Dinner: 15 Leva (2 Leva is approximately 1€)

Language: the language in the training will be English

Financial Contribution:

• Bulgarian participants: 850 Leva
• Participants from western European countries: 1000€ – 1300€
• Participants from other eastern European countries: please, ask/offer what is possible for you depending on your economic situation.

We have a few spaces available for people who can’t pay the requested amount, especially for people from Ukraine. We have an application form for your information and decide by the end of July who qualifies for these spaces.

You have the option to pay a higher amount = donation with which you support the participation of people who can’t afford to pay the amount we ask for.

For more (also general) information, please, connect with Petya Georgieva:

by mail: nenasilstvena.komunikacia@gmail.com
or by phone: +359 889 986 294