"access kinging"

Raffi Aftandelian raffi at pochtamt.ru
Tue Jul 8 07:46:55 PDT 2003


Dear fellow OS'rs,
Below is my "ask" to seek funding to attend the "Whole System in the
Room" workshop offered by Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff and which
Michael Pannwitz is organizing.

If you can help in any way (including forwarding the letter), I'd much
appreciate it.

Thanks,
Raffi Aftandelian
______________
Dear colleagues,
I am an Armenian-American who has been working in Russia as a
volunteer trainer and facilitator in conflict resolution since 1997, until April this year in
Moscow. Currently, I am living and working in Nazran, Ingushetia (a republic bordering
Chechnya). I have worked mostly in developing the community conflict
resolution training program, Alternatives to Violence Project
(www.avpusa.org is the US site), which exists in over 30 countries. A few years on, this work
has spread from Moscow to Lipetsk, Ingushetia, Belarus, and Georgia. The training
manuals have been translated into Russian and Georgian. There are also
plans to adapt the manuals and translate them into Chechen. Over 100
people have been trained in AVP, and another 50 have being trained in
social action.

It is especially exciting that the AVP trainings in Ingushetia not only provide
social rehabilitation but also give young Chechen refugees a sense of hope for the
future. Some have also found work in a region with high
unemployment. Others have started university and some have written
grants and received funding.

In Ingushetia, I work with a number of nonprofit organizations that work with Chechen
refugees. My work here is to support the counselors who work with
Chechen refugees, help them work more creatively. Also, I am a
co-trainer that works in Prigorodny District in North Ossetia, site of
terrible ethnic clashes in 1992 and ongoing tension between Ossetians
and Ingush. We conduct trainings in schools to help tear down the
walls that exist between Ingush and Ossetians, both youth and adults.

In 2001 I was trained in Open Space Technology by Birgitt Williams in
Novosibirsk. Since then I have brought OST into my work at every
available opportunity, including in my work here.

I am writing to seek your financial support (altogether I need to
raise 1200 USD) to attend the Facilitating the Whole System in the
Room, a workshop being offered in Berlin in September this year. These
funds would go towards my transportation and accommodation during the
training, as well as incidentals.


***Why attend this training?***
While I feel that I am a competent trainer and facilitator, I need to
be more in touch with my blindspots, be clearer about what my needs
and what are the group's.

I want to learn how to channel my humor and spontaneity to deepen the
work of the group.

This workshop will help me develop my own self-awareness as a
facilitator and trainer. It will help me develop more economy of
action. In my work, I will be able to create group spaces where there
is more creative spirit, more courage, and more vulnerability.

I will directly share through mini-workshops what I learned at
this training with my colleagues here in the North Caucasus.

***What can I offer?***
Before or after the workshop, I can offer the following:

-a presentation on my work in Ingushetia
-consult those who are interested in working in Chechnya, the North
Caucasus, or Russia
-a mini Alternatives to Violence Project workshop
-conduct an Open Space meeting on a topic of importance to your/your
organization
-oral Russian-English/English-Russian translation

and...

-lessons in introductory juggling and spiced popcorn

***If you feel you can support me***
Please contact me. If you would like to make a bank transfer, I can
send you the account particulars.

If you don't think you can help, might you consider forwarding this
message to others?

Thanks for your consideration.
Raffi Aftandelian
tel/fax +7 (8732)225218
mob. +7 928-961-3795


 Raffi                          mailto:raffi at pochtamt.ru
 ________________________
Dear Colleagues,
We invite you to join us in year three of an exciting new seminar integrating systems change and
personal growth. We created Facilitating the Whole System in the Room for leaders who want to
increase their ability to help diverse work groups achieve key goals.
We define "facilitating" as a learnable skill necessary to the betterment of work groups and
society.
The seminar weaves together systems and self-knowledge into simple practices for whole systems
improvement. You can do more and work less.
"Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There!"

You need not try to control people’s behavior to get the right things
done. Instead, imagine creating conditions under which people motivate
themselves to do what needs doing. We greatly increase
our ability to do that by taking charge of our own anxiety about
success and failure, meeting
peoples’ needs, looking good, and resolving conflicting expectations.
As we learn a few simple
ways to control structure rather than a complex smorgasbord of do’s and don’ts based on trying
to
control behavior, we achieve more while "intervening" less.
Our methods have been refined for 15 years in hundreds of large
planning meetings in Africa, Asia,

Australia, India, Europe, and North and South America. In this seminar, however, we do not teach
any particular meeting designs. Rather, we introduce techniques applicable to any task-focused
meeting where dialogue and cooperation are desired.

As we learn the arts of shaping our own inner dialogues and of enabling dialogue across
boundaries of function, level, education, culture, class and ethnicity, we greatly enhance our
ability
to make positive ripples in the world.

In our ongoing development as facilitators, we have found this way of
working to be both freeing
and life-changing. We invite you to join us in 2003.
Sincerely,
Sandra Janoff and Marv Weisbord

*
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