Ken Kelly: Connecting Communities in Downtown Victoria

Like any city centre, downtown Victoria is a place where people from different communities intersect; residential, visitor, business, service, cultural.  Each community is diverse. Residents may be living in high-end condos or in short-term residence at Our Place.  Visitors include tourists, local shoppers, and the transient homeless. Businesses range from big bank office to small, […]

Silence: Pattern Interruptus

When conflict is all around, resolution seems distant, and the voices ring loud, sometimes the best way forward is to say nothing silence. As a mediator, I’ve found silence can be an effective pattern interrupt technique, a way to break impasse, especially if the parties in a dispute aren’t listening well, are locked onto negativity, […]

CIIAN: Helping Nations build their conflict resolution capacity

I had a great long-distance conversation with Evan Hoffman this week.  Based in Ottawa, he is Executive Director of the Canadian International Institute of Applied Negotiation (CIIAN), a Canadian NGO, as well as being a Faculty member with the School of Peace and Conflict Management at Royal Roads University. Initially connecting with Evan through Twitter […]

10 Diverse ways to build your capacity to appreciate the Other

My first blogging inclination this week was to write a glorious followup to a post I wrote a year ago, on strategies to reduce the income inequality gap.  Getting into it, I quickly discovered I may have overstretched myself.  Rather than snap, I humbly offer this alternative…   It is through our shared disconnection, that […]

The Many Perspectives on Aging

A lot happens on the edges.  As we get close to the far edge of our life, it’s an opportunity to look back, and reflect on what happened, and be true to oneself. Listening and interacting with older people (older than me, anyways) or my elders, as I prefer to relate to them, can be […]