COMMUNITY

ACTION
CIRLCES
GENERAL
RESOURCES
RESOURCES TO HOST
COMMUNITY ACTION
CIRCLES



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General Resources About Circles
Will Keepins Principles of Spiritual Leadership
http://ecologicalleadership.blogspot.com/2011/03/12-principles-of-spiritual-
leadership.html

PeerSpirit
PeerSpirit is an organization founded by Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea that has
developed a circle model for group and organizational development. There are
several resources on their website:
http://www.peerspirit.com/index.html

For an overview of their guidelines for circle meetings:
http://www.peerspirit.com/gifts/PeerSpirit-Circle-Guidelines2010.pdf

Baldwin and Linnea have also co-authored a book on circle work, entitled The
Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair.
Book description:
All modern group processes that are open to collaboration or to flattening the
hierarchy are based in some way on circle practices. As organizations of all kinds
move increasingly toward shared and rotating leadership, they are calling on the
circle model to form sustainable teams and adopt circle-driven group processes
such as World Caf, Open Space, and Art of Hosting. Meetings in the round have
become the preferred tool for moving individual commitment into group action.
This book lays out the structure of circle conversation, based on the original work of
the co-authors who have studied and standardized the essential elements that
constitute circle practice. It takes readers through a circle visual (the Components
of Circle) and presents both structure and story so that readers understand how
these elements come into play and how they interrelate and interact. It also
embeds circle process experience in stories and examples drawing on the authors
15 years of experience as global thought leaders and originators of this form, and it

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presents detailed instructions and suggestions for getting started, setting goals, and
solving conflicts.

CirclesWork!: Resources for Co-creating the Culture of
Cooperation
This circle model, developed by Lauren Oliver, PhD and Bonnie Burstein PhD,
enables groups to co-create enduring, healthy, life-affirming change maker circles,
engaged in action that makes a difference in our world. The website houses useful
tools for building and enriching your own groups.
http://circleswork.net

Find their Circles Launch Toolkit, which includes 6 Tools for Cooperative Work,
here: http://circleswork.net/creating-circles/start-your-circle/. The Clearing the Air
process could be useful to add before the circle closing

Excellent article on the power, benefits, characteristics and
dynamics of circles
Tracy Thompson, University of Washington Tacoma
Circles of Change, Stanford Social Innovation Review, November 10, 2011
http://www.memphisgrantmakers.org/news-detail.php?id=14

Article on Learning Circles and their role in strengthening
collective action and contributing to social change
Learning Circles: One Form of Knowledge Production in Social Action Research by
Frances Ravensbergen and Madine Vanderplaat, published in the McGill Journal of
Education (Vol. 45, No. 3, Fall 2010)
LInk to pdf: mje.mcgill.ca/article/download/4620/6724

The Pachamama Alliance is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco. Its mission is to empower
indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest to preserve their lands and culture and, using insights gained from that
work, to educate and inspire individuals everywhere to bring forth a thriving, just and sustainable world.
Learn more at pachamama.org
Pachamama Alliance
Presidio Bldg #1009, 2nd Floor P.O. Box 29191 San Francisco, CA 94129 +1 415 561 4522
Developing Online Learning Circles
Margaret Riel of Pepperdine University studied learning circles that were developed
to support the action research of students as part of their Masters of Art in Learning
Technology. Though she is focused on academic settings, and her website is a
resource for those who want to develop online Learning Circles, much of the
information can be applied to Action Circles, especially the characteristics of the
model:
https://sites.google.com/site/onlinelearningcircles/Home/learning-circles-defined