Facilitation Intensive Dates | Cohousing California

The Final Weekend: June, 2013

Fri, 31 May 2013 18:00:30 -0700

Perhaps at the new Wolf Creek Lodge Senior Cohousing in Grass Valley?

Originally scheduled for June 6, we are working on moving it to the prior weekend, May 31-June 3.

March 13-15, 2013

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 07:21:38 -0700

The seventh class in the series, perhaps at a Sacramento-area community or in the core Bay Area.

Dec. 6-9, 2012: New Brighton in Aptos

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 19:09:28 -0800

The third-to-last weekend in the Facilitation Intensive series. To be held at New Brighton Cohousing in Aptos, near the beach just below Santa Cruz.

Sept. 14-18, 2012: Emerald Earth

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 19:20:45 -0700

The 2d 2012 course in the series, in an off-the-grid community in rural Mendocino County, near Boonville.

June 6-9, 2012: Monan's Rill

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 19:20:01 -0700

The first 2012 training intensive (4th in the series), postponed from March so we could use an outdoor venue during dry-weather season.

Primary topic focus: Delegation. Don't get stuck on thinking that you have to do it all yourself, or that your community needs everybody to participate in every decision and meeting.

Dec. 1-4, 2011: Oakland, CA

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 07:16:41 -0800

The last 2011 training featured an emphasis on Conflict. We returned to Golden Gate Cohousing, now an established community, to help members resolve issues between allies, including the nonprofit Parker Street Foundation that created it and PLACE for Sustainable Living which is partnering to design and populate the second phase of this "Instant Cohousing" project.

Aug. 25-28, 2011: Yulupa in Santa Rosa

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 07:15:00 -0700

The Second Weekend in the series was hosted by Yulupa Cohousing in Santa Rosa, CA. This six-year-old community was looking for help keeping up participation levels, after some membership turnover and other challenges. The weekend will look at different meeting formats and include three full days of instruction and hands-on facilitation experience.

April 21-24, 2011: Initial Weekend in Oakland

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 07:04:02 -0700

Our first host location

Participants traveling from The North Bay and the Sacramento region or beyond got to stay in newly-refurbished shared rooms and the newly-created Common House guestroom at Golden Gate Cohousing.

Betsy Morris and Jack Sawyer in front of the fireplace in the Golden Gate Common House

The first gathering in the two-year quarterly facilitation intensive series.

It was a challenge for us to find a cohousing neighborhood in the core of the San Francisco Bay Area that had both the interest in the series and the capacity and willingness to host the first session. Many communities are too small to have enough people to spread the work/member hosting or don't have guest rooms or have common houses to small for the group plus their members.

So we found an innovative approach: split the duties and the benefits between two nearby neighborhoods.

Our first host community was Golden Gate Cohousing, a new community forming around a move-in ready site in Northwest Oakland. We will have the rare opportunity in the series to facilitate a process of group formation and visioning, helping find a model that works for both the site and the people.

Because Golden Gate Cohousing is new and doesn't have established members yet, nearby Triple Point Cohousing split the hosting, providing us with delectable food (you have got to taste their soups and chocolate chip cookies) and benefiting from one of our facilitation sessions.