The peacemaking circle is a process that brings together individuals who wish to engage in conflict resolution, healing, support, decision making or other activities in which honest communications, relationship development, and community building are core desired outcomes. "Circles" offer an alternative to contemporary meeting processes that often rely on hierarchy, win-lose positioning, and victim/rescuer approaches to relationships and problem solving.
Derived from aboriginal and native traditions, circles bring people together in a way that creates trust, respect, intimacy, good will, belonging, generosity, mutuality and reciprocity. The process is never about "changing others", but rather is an invitation to change oneself and one’s relationship with the community.
Circles intentionally create a sacred space that lifts barriers between people, opening fresh possibilities for connection, collaboration and mutual understanding. The process works because it brings people together in a way that allows them to see one another as human beings and to talk about what matters.
Circles can be understood in terms of the values and principles upon which they operate, and the structures they use to support these values and principles.
Source: Peacemaking Circles by Kay Pranis
“The principles inspire the vision and hope we need to maintain healthy, active communities. They also help us pull together to assume responsibility and to do the hard moral work of being a community. They provide continual opportunities for building respect, trust, understanding, and a working experience of community.”
Acts on our personal values
Participants are encouraged to bring their values to everything
Includes all interests
All stakeholders, all who are affected, are invited
Easily accessible to all
Participation needs to be simple, transparent
Offer everyone an equal opportunity to participate
Each person has an equal voice and role in decision making
Involvement is voluntary
Participation is always a choice, no one is pressured to attend or speak
Everyone participates directly as themselves
No one has someone speaking for them
Guided by a shared vision
What is the overall purpose of the community?
Designed by those who use them
Each community designs its own process for each case
Flexible in accommodating unique needs and interests
The process is responsive to the situation at hand, emergent
A holistic approach
The process is part of and affects the surrounding ecosystem
Maintain a respect for all
Each person and the community is respected in an equally good way