Once the sale of the Tivoli Housing Co-op was complete in 2014, the Common Fire Foundation shifted its focus dramatically, limiting itself to providing basic support for the Beacon Co-Housing community. The Foundation previously had a much more expansive vision of helping to support the creation of numerous intentional communities nationwide that shared our values related to communities as a foundation for personal and collective transformation. The information on this page represents our PREVIOUS more expansive vision and is provided here in the hopes that it may help to support or inspire other people’s efforts in this field.
Over the course of the Certification, participants will receive over 150 hours of trainings, spread out over twenty full-days offered roughly once a month (ten per year). The trainings address a wide range of skills and knowledge directly relevant to living in community, working successfully in groups, and being effective agents for change in the world, not to mention to leading a rewarding and meaningful life.
The trainings are facilitated by a mix of Common Fire trainers and other people well-respected in their fields.
We seek to provide child care as needed. Please let us know if that is something that interests you.
Individual trainings are open to the public, however we have limited capacity for some trainings and program participants get priority. If you would like to attend a training and are not in the program, please contact us to reserve a spot. (845) 554-3406, or certificate@commonfire.org.
Twice a Year:
Some practices are so important to our personal well-being and our ability to work effectively with others that they demand frequent revisiting. So we offer two of our trainings twice a year, meaning a total of four times for the certificate program.
Ongoing Personal Growth and Interpersonal Dialogue
There are many practices and traditions that support ongoing personal growth and meaningful communication with others, but Common Fire has found the Be Present Empowerment Model® to be particularly effective and transformational in our intentional community settings, particularly as we strive to keep our communities accessible and rewarding for a broad diversity of people.
It's a model that promotes deep self-awareness, effective dialogue, and respect and understanding, particularly among a diversity of people. It seeks to replace "silence with information, assumptions with a diversity of insights, and powerlessness with a sense of personal responsibility."
In these trainings we’ll share some of our rich history with the Be Present Empowerment Model® and give people a chance to learn about and experience the Model.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict is a natural and necessary part of living in community -- or being in any authentic relationship. Depending on how we approach it, conflict can be a path to self-discovery and stronger connections within the community, or it can block forward movement in the community and make people want to run for the hills. All too often it's the latter.
Conflict takes a heavy toll on many communities and literally does drive many people away. We offer training in a four-step process that aims to be a supplement to the Be Present Empowerment Model, providing a structure to help de-escalate a situation of conflict and provide immediate, practical solutions to give the people involved space and support while they continue to do the deeper work of understanding themselves and how they relate with others.
Once a Year:
Then there are some trainings that are offered once a year, meaning people go through them twice as part of the certificate program.
Consensus, Facilitation, & Liberation
In the words of Autumn Brown, “The Consensus Process is much more than a decision-making tool. It is a creative process, the outcome of which is a synthesis of the raw materials and ideas of each person who participates. It is a radical group process method which rejects hierarchical forms of decision-making. This workshop focuses on consensus as a revolutionary and liberating practice, examines the principles and practices that bring about successful use of consensus, and explores its potential as an organizing tool through group discussions, storytelling and games.”
Identity and Patterns of Oppression
This workshop aims to help us better understand patterns of oppression in the world today and to be more effective at transcending those patterns in our own lives and in the world. We’ll have the opportunity to more deeply explore our own identities, investigate ways we’ve internalized various forms of oppression in our views and behaviors, and ways those connect with larger patterns and systems of oppression. We'll look at the relationship between oppression and privilege, and we’ll look at what our personal barriers are to overcoming oppression within ourselves and in the world, and develop strategies for addressing them.
Weaving Our Lives with Land and Place, and Producing Our Own Food
“The significance - and ultimately the quality - of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.” -- Wendell Barry
"What permaculturists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet." -- David Suzuki
Every spring we take a day to learn about and directly engage the natural environment around the co-op. We learn the history of the land and local community, we prepare the soil and plant the community’s garden, and we learn some of the basics of permaculture. This includes topics such as organic gardening, composting and mulching, forest farming, water retention and regeneration, and erosion control. It also includes some time getting to know the flora and fauna of the region, and some traditional ways of engaging it through cuisine, medicine, floral arrangements and spiritual practices.
Preserving and Storing Food
"Our children ... should enter adulthood with a basic knowledge of how to store food over winter without the cooperation of a nuclear power plant a hundred miles away. Every animal in the forest is taught this skill; we owe our children no less." -- Jerry Minnich
Every fall we spend a day getting familiar with the arts of canning, pickling, and fermenting fruits and vegetables, preserving venison and shad, and using root cellars. The housing co-op has a large, three-room root cellar designed to optimize food storage, and participants will be able to eat local fruits and vegetables through the winter until at least March and as late as May.
Meditation, Yoga, and Mind-Body Practice: Connecting with the Inner Sacred
We don't actually do a full-day training on this. Rather, we set aside one hour of all of the other trainings for it. We practice listening to the needs of our bodies and spirits, and learning to attend to them with energizing, relaxing, stimulating or calming techniques. We practice self-care, noting ways our bodies' needs shift over the seasons. And we consider the connection between inner mindfulness and outer transformation.
Elective Trainings
Program participants will select the topic for the other two trainings each year. They'll be drawn from the following list, or participants can request to have a training in a different topic.
Practical Training in Grassroots Activism, Advocacy & Organizing
Inspired by Camp Wellstone and the work of the Working Families Party in New York, this training will address:
- Power mapping and planning a campaign
- Effective messaging
- Mobilizing and managing people
- Grassroots advocacy & lobbying
Fundraising
Gain the tools and develop a personal relationship around fundraising that allow you to be effective in the work you care about. Help fund your own projects, or become a key player in the development of an organization. This workshop will help you translate your values and goals into campaigns that friends, family, and community members will be inspired by. We'll look at grassroots fundraising, events, large donors, foundations, and more.
Effective Leadership
Inspired by the Rockwood Leadership Institute, this training will help participants nurture:
- Clarity of vision
- Effective management of time and organizing of tasks
- Skills for effectively working with others
- An ability to create clear goals and paths for achieving them
Green and Natural Building
This workshop will focus on different traditions, old and new, of building sustainable structures that are good for people and good for the earth. Includes introductions to materials and technologies from across the globe, and how the Tivoli coop is an example of this. Involves hands-on opportunities.
Food Justice
We’ll learn about some of the key regional, national, and international organizations working on critical issues related to food, we’ll learn about food systems in the United States, and help people think about their own food decisions.
Creating an Intentional Community
"The next Buddha will not take the form of an individual. The next Buddha may take the form of a community; a community practicing understanding and loving kindness, a community practicing mindful living. This may be the most important thing we can do for the survival of the Earth." -- Thich Nhat Hanh
This training will bring together the critical learnings of the Common Fire Foundation over the past ten years and best practices from other intentional communities and guides for creating communities. It will include detailed visioning, empowered relationship practices, decisionmaking and power, and financial and legal basics.
Transition Towns
Don’t dream it, do it! Transition Towns are part of a movement to create "community-led responses to climate change and shrinking supplies of cheap energy, building resilience and happiness." Hundreds of towns and districts have adopted the "Transition model." We'll learn about the successes and challenges of these groups, and do some concrete strategizing for our own larger communities.
Simple Living, Healthy Relationships with Money, and Alternative Economics
We'll engage in exercises aimed at helping us identify just "how much is enough" for each of us, we'll strategize about ways each of us can live more simply and affordably, and we'll look at key practices that help people to embrace a life of abundance and have a healthy relationship with money. We'll learn about the ethics of non-consumption and find different ways to have money work for us through targeted giving and spending. We’ll review alternative international models including work sharing, barter, group insurance, and cooperative ownership, and explore how these are being developed locally.
Alternative and Community Health and Self Care
This workshop will provide a space where we can look away from the allopathic health care system and learn about affordable alternative modalities including western herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine, ayurvedic well-being, acupuncture, and movement therapies. It will include reating a plan for your own self care to keep yourself optimally in good health to further your own ambitions life.
Learn more: Ongoing Learning...
The Trainings
