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"What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart." -Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication, The Language of Compassion.

"We learned to speak but not communicate and that has led to so much unnecessary personal and social misery. In NVC you will find an amazingly effective language for saying what's on your mind and in your heart. Like so many essential and elegant systems, it's simple on the surface, challenging to use in the heat of the moment and powerful in its results."
-Vicki Robin, author of Your Money or Your Life

Imagine connecting with the human spirit in each person in any situation.
We've learned to see it as risky to be vulnerable and reveal ourselves honestly, but that is exactly what is required to connect with the human spirit in another and that is what inspires the same level of honesty to be returned.

Imagine interacting with others in a way that allows everyone's needs to be equally valued. We've learned to go after what we want, to compete and win, but now we're learning that there's a higher idea that is revealed when we look deeply into ourselves. It's the idea of "win/win" -- the integrity of valuing another's needs as equal to our own. We're finding that having the courage to live from that integrity is powerfully life-changing.

Imagine creating organizations and life-serving systems responsive to our needs and the needs of our environment. We've been immersed in the idea that more is better-- that to survive and progress, we must fight until we dominate and win, but now we see that we can overdo it and the whole world loses. It requires re-thinking our old ingrained beliefs and having the courage to go with our deeper knowing. In our organizations we have the choice to create partnerships that serve common purposes and goals in powerful win/win alignments.

WNCC's Vision Locally people have come together to form the Whatcom Network for Compassionaate Communication organization. We have a powerful vision of what NVC can do in our own lives. Seeing this for ourselves, we are putting our energies together in order to move to another plane of connection. Our vision includes presenting NVC at no charge to all who want training-- individuals, schools and organizations. Doing so will provide a foundation of cooperation for the entire community.

What is Nonviolent Communication? Nonviolent Communication has been developed over the past 35 years by Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist and the Director of the Center for Nonviolent Communication in Geneva, Switzerland. There are now over 100 certified trainers worldwide, who, along with Dr. Rosenberg, contribute to global peace and social change by training in schools, prisons, health care institutions, government agencies, corporations and communities.

For teaching purposes NVC is sometimes called "Giraffe" language. The image of the giraffe was chosen because it has the largest heart of any land animal and because it takes a broad view of things.

Note: WSNVC's use of the image and term "giraffe" is in no way connected to The Giraffe Project, a completely separate nonprofit organization producing its own training and educational materials.

NVC is a language of emotional literacy and is remarkable because only one person in an exchange needs to be fluent. With enough skill it can be used in virtually any situation, including parenting. "NVC helped me to become a vastly more effective parent," said Kathleen Olsen of Del Mar. "The shouting in our house is over."

The NVC model has four parts, 1) the observation, the concrete actions we are observing that are affecting our well-being, 2) the feelings, how we are feeling in relation to what we are observing 3) the needs, the wants, values, preferences that are creating our feelings and 4) the request, the concrete, positive, presently doable action we request in order to enrich our lives. more.......