Dear Friends,

New staff members (from left): Yahoda, Alex, and Malik

 The days are just packed here with school-based programming in five buildings, the continual hosting of groups and events at the Gandhi House as well as various other community projects we are involved in. Fortunately, the staff here is growing and eager to meet the challenges. Last month we were delighted to welcome Malik Thompson who is returning from Washington, DC for a year-long internship with us, Alex DeNooyer from Michigan who is spending a year with us through the Mennonite Voluntary Service, and Yahoda Miller, a long-time neighbor and 2014 Wilson High School graduate who is interning with us part-time. Long-time volunteer David Sanchez is joining us full time while Erin Thompson continues in his role as our business manager. We were delighted this summer to promote Shannon Richmond to associate director. Shannon's primary focus is on our school-based programming and nonviolence clubs. 

Coming up, we've got a War Tax Resistance workshop this weekend (October 24-25) and in early November a workshop with the amazing Miki Kashtan from the San Francisco area on finding ways to make change happen through visionary collaboration. See below for more on both of these.

Everything we do is with an eye to supporting the creation of a culture of peace in Rochester and beyond. No matter what the statistics say or what the news says, it's what ALL of us want if we only knew how.  Let's keep working together to get there. Let's be good ancestors.

This comes with love from everyone here,

Kit Miller

for the Gandhi Institute

Celebration of Gandhi Party! 

On October 5th we celebrated our fourth annual Gandhi birthday celebration with an open house. The event included Banghra dancing, live music, a magic show, an empathy labyrinth and the recognition of nonviolence training graduates from the workshop with Dr. Bernard Lafayette this past July.

Thanks to everyone who attended this annual Gandhi birthday celebration! Special thanks to: DJ Alykhan for the gift of music once again, planning committee members Barb Van Kerkhove, Shira Peterson, Raj Nair and Rebecca Johnson; Abundance Coop for the apples, Small World Bakery for the cupcakes, Shira Peterson for the empathy labyrinth, Joel Gallegos-Greenwich for sharing more spell-binding magic, and RIT's Bhangra Dance Troupe for sharing their amazing gifts with us again. Thanks to all Gandhi staff and board for hours of effort to make this event another warm and welcoming event.  

 

Check out this video about the party, made by staff member Malik Thompson:

Gandhi Birthday Party 2014

 

Here are a few photos!

 

Nonviolence Club member and 2014 Pittsford-Mendon HS graduate Margaret Thurston shares about working with the Gandhi Institute.

Party guests!

Ethan and Logan Brown share about their experience training with Dr. Bernard Lafayette and going out to teach nonviolence in the community.

War Tax Resistance Workshop

Join us if you are curious about war tax resistance or if you are looking to be able to counsel others.

 

Friday evening will be a gathering to share our stories. There will be people who have decided to redirect their taxes away from the military, and there will be those who are exploring these issues for the first time. Saturday will include a number of different activities: individual counseling, group activities to help us explore war tax resistance/witness and counselor training. The latter will be a step-by-step process of learning how to counsel people exploring war tax resistance.

Requested donation: $20-50, no one turned away for lack of funds!

Please register by October 23 with Tom Joyce - 607-277-7426, tomjoyce51@aim.com  (please put war tax witness in the subject line) 

No One Left Behind: The Art and Craft of Facilitating Group Decisions

Monday-Tuesday

November 3 & 4

9:00 AM-5:00 PM each day

Downtown United Presbyterian Church (Celebration Hall)

121 North Fitzhugh St., Rochester NY

Have you ever dreaded going to a meeting or watched in dismay as a group collapses into conflict? Learn a unique decision-making process, developed by Miki Kashtan, which can be used in emergency situations to reach a quick decision, to break through a bottleneck within a group, or throughout the life-cycle of a long term project. Miki uses this process in her work with Israelis and Palestinians, Minnesota legislators, and groups of all kinds. Convergent Facilitation was featured in Miki's recent New York Times article, "Want Teamwork? Encourage Free Speech" (April 12, 2014).

More info and to register: No One Left Behind: The Art and Craft of Facilitating Group Decisions 

We Need You! Yes, You!  

Despite keeping our budget as lean and small as can be, we struggle with funding. Especially as we head into the holiday season next month, please keep the Gandhi Institute in mind. Ideas include:

+Make tax deductible gifts of stock.

+Make a painless ongoing contribution (monthly or whatever frequency makes sense) that will add up over time ($3/day=latte=$1080/yr).

+Make a gift to the Institute in someone's name in lieu of a gift and they can receive a Gandhi Knowledge Card Deck as part of that.

+Purchase Gandhi gear: a poster, hand-made unique screen printed t-shirt or Gandhi Knowledge Card Deck.

+Tell friends about this list who complain that they hate buying gifts.

+Add your idea here!

Thanks for thinking about this and making sure that we're here for years to come.

The Young Men of Industry 

by Erin Thompson 

The Gandhi Institute has been working closely with contacts at the Industry Juvenile Detention Center in Rush, N.Y. to establish a Nonviolence Club at that facility. Recently the Institute brought senior Kingian Nonviolence trainer Jonathan "Globe" Lewis to Rochester in order for him to conduct a two-day nonviolence workshop (October 3rd and 4th). The overlapped timing of these two endeavors created a small window of opportunity - on Thursday, October 2nd, which is Gandhi's birthday - in which to introduce Jonathan and the Industry youth to each other. The results were equal parts sobering and heartwarming...