In 2005 Janice Wasser and Avi Butavi came to McCoCo in Scotland. They represented the DROR co-counselling community in Israel and their intention was to link up and join with CCI. McCoCo was their first step on their journey. Their visit worked out well and inspired several co-counsellors which I see as the benefit of Diversity. In hindsight this success was also due to McCoCo’s inbuilt culture based on the principle that clients are in charge of their sessions specifically and co-counsellors in charge of their own lives generally. This attitude fosters and enables an enriching and empowering diversity culture in Co-Counselling.

Because of this McCoCo experience and this CCI principle I expected that DROR joining CCI would go smoothly. That turned out to be an illusion, to say the least. As a consequence we organised the European CCI 2008 in Scotland under the banner of “Diversity”. It was great to learn that exactly because of this theme several co-counsellors decided to attend this CCI. Since then the tide seemed to be turning around towards accepting DROR and more openness to diversity due to positive events at the American CCIs and the efforts by Sytse and Marlies visiting DROR in Israel.

A year after the CCI in Scotland at the CCI in Germany, the Münster people for the first time presented their own approach and so did the DROR people. I found it remarkable to notice the surprise of people who expected something very different and much more challenging than actually was the case. Anyway, this time I experienced the whole atmosphere at the CCI as accepting diversity and its enrichments on offer. However, this stopped short of formally accepting the DROR community as part of CCI when people objected to passing the CCI flag on to their international workshop some months later.

Recently, Janice Wasser on behalf of the DROR community wrote to the CCI community to express their wish to be part of CCI.  You can read it here. Feel free to respond to their letter as well.

It is great to see the so far very positive responses especially by those co-counsellors who initially were very sceptical about DROR joining CCI. Click here to see all the responses.

Finally I would like to celebrate here especially Janice Wasser for her perseverance in materialising her dream for the best of CCI.