Cooperative Culture and Communication

Come and join us for this introductory workshop in our meeting room here at Riverside, which will have you dive into Cooperative Culture.

Our modern culture tolerates or promotes individualism and competition, which contributes to a toxic culture that causes disconnection and pain.  We hardly notice it, embedded within all aspects of our lives and conditioning, as it silently warps our thinking that this is "normal" or is the route to success.  A toxic culture results in excessive conflict, ineffective meetings, apathy, frustration, gaslighting, divisiveness, and can unravel the best of intentions and poison great projects and relationships.

Cooperative culture can lead to compassion, understanding, deeper connection, effective and successful projects, respectful communication, ability to make decisions and resolve conflicts easier and can bring about social justice on a wider scale.

In this workshop, we'll be uncovering what we might be doing or thinking that is part of the toxic culture, and we'll be learning what elements and skills make up cooperative culture.  We'll be doing a few activities to practice cooperative systems that can be applied to our real-life scenarios.  Cooperative culture is also fun, so some of the activities will also be fun and playful.

Zola is passionate about cooperation, collaboration, intentional community, compassionate communication, and workplace/organisational culture. She enjoys training, facilitating, and coaching groups and organisations in these skills that will allow them to flourish and create positive outcomes for themselves and the people and communities they serve.

She has a BA in Anthropology/Sociology, a Masters in International and Intercultural Management. She’s received certificates in Ecovillage Design Education, Permaculture Design, and Regenerative Development and studied Non-Violent Communication (NVC).

Please bring a plate of nibbles to share for the mid-break.

Bookings close Wednesday, 22nd November at 12pm, noon. Limited spaces. Bookings essential.

This workshop is proudly sponsored by the Riverside Community Trust. Please contact Tanja (at education@riverside.org.nz) for workshop questions or to ask about sponsorship options.