a)    Netherlands

Mar 2016: annual gathering. About 10 people.   About 2 weekends per year.

Basic language is Dutch but if you visit then there are many people able to translate to English.

Last fundamentals was Sep-Oct 2015.  No takers so far this year.   New ideas for short open workshops, 1 day each, including some parts of coco.

Website: we have a newsletter for members based on the website.  We have also opened the possibility for non-members (non-co-counsellors) to register for the public events.   About 60 people have registered (!).  Now we just need to get them to come to an event.

Website also has all the info for CCI Netherlands 2017 – in English.    www.co-counseling.nl

JP has had a request from a group of 20-something women to run a coco event next year.

b)    England + Wales +NI

Things happen.  There are about 8 active teachers, including 1 new in his 30s last year, and a new volunteer keen to accredit herself.

We are having issues with getting people to come to core training, to become active afterwards, or to come to residentials.   Some of the problem is financial.

Some people don’t like the term “fundamentals” because of associations with fundamentalism.

Many communities have drop-in groups.  

At Ringsfield Hall meeting in Suffolk, we are aiming to talk about how to bring more people in.

There is a lot of discussion about “coco light”, with some elements of coco but not all.   Most successful so far is “peer support network” started and funded via Mind (Mental Health charity).

There are quite a lot of weekend workshops, about 8-10 in the year.

Paper newsletter One to One: speak to John Talbut.

JP: I am sitting on a reserve fund of about £8,000.   This is for structural, innovative projects, like new networking websites, and so on.   If you think you will benefit from this, talk to JP.

Wales: some coco happening, no courses that we know about.

NI: no coco that we know about.

UK-maintained websites & email group:

There is a UK websites, http://www.co-counselling.org.uk/ .

There is also “ cocoinfo” http://co-counselling.info/en maintained in the UK but intended as an international website.  All workshops published on CoCoInfo are also automatically published on several other coco web sites.  The Coco info web site can also be used by any community to set up their internal newsletter.  Talk to JP about this.

Several individual teachers have their own websites.

Cocolist also exists: email discussion group, UK-based but worldwide.

c)     Scotland

Had community meeting 20 people in July.   Also meeting in Pitlochry.   Distances:  2.5 to 3 hour journeys mean that we rarely all meet together.   McCoCo happens in the borders of Scotland every May – Beltane.   McCoCo has visitors from a lot of different communities – Scotland England Netherlands, sometimes Germany and Israel, …

We have other events e.g. coco and the arts on Bute

Has an email newsletter.   Trying to produce a paper newletter.

There is also a Scottish web site: http://www.cocoscotland.co.uk/ .

d)    New Zealand

Summer and winter gatherings every year.   Community in Auckland, fundamentals in August.  Regular meetings.   “If you are visiting NZ, just contact one of us, we’ll welcome you.”   Quite small community.

e)    Germany

Last year 10 teachers were trained.

This year, small Germany + Netherlands coco residential meeting (mini-CCI).  

Ongoing group meeting through the year.

We have collected some money in order to rebuild Haus Kloppenburg, 100,000EUR work will start in Jan 2018.  More money is still needed: donations welcome.  

We get some financial support for individual projects for instance the ongoing coco group.

The Haus Kloppenburg association has existed for many years (since 1978).   There is now a new umbrella organisation DOG which has existed for 3 years, with a new committee, separate from Siglind and Johannes.

f)      Israel

Avi and Janice are teaching fundamentals in the prisons for 15 years.   Two graduates from the course have been active in Dror.  Hoping for more.

Arab-Jewish support group: every month, now for 40 years.   We invite anybody who is interested to join us (don’t have to be trained co-counsellors).

2 active teachers right now.   Janice finished a class recently in a Bedouin city in the south and will offer an intro for a group of young women in Tel Aviv.  She uses the title “the art of listening” to advertise co-counselling. The other teacher is Luiza.   

We invite the RC community in Israel to our sessions gatherings which occur about every month. They invited Janice and Luiza to a day workshop – some contact.  

We posted the invitation for CCI Nov 16 on the RC facebook page.  This was allowed by RC page manager.

We will be offering a fundamentals course (56 hours) in Hebrew for public school teachers where they earn credits for their teaching credentials. It is advertised in a course book offered by the teachers' union in Israel, recommended by the Ministry of Education.  

g)    USA

Communities are spread across the USA.   Connecticut/Massachusetts, Michigan, California, North Carolina.

NC is a small community in a big state (11 hours edge to edge).  We rely a lot on email and web.   The church is a big community; we hope to offer mini-mini-coco to people via the churches.

New England Teachers meet every 6 weeks.  We have recently developed a process for what to do if one individual does anything which is not in line with the contract.   We also revised the teacher accreditation document.   New Haven also has a regular meeting: Fred has been very active.

Our big problem is “how to bring people into coco”.   We have created videos, put them on the web.  Too soon to tell if this will be successful in bringing more people in.

There are a few teachers who are active in New England and Michigan.

We have had some contact with a “splinter group” of co-cos in North West of USA.

CCI happens every April and there is also a fall (autumn) workshop and a women’s workshop.

Community committee meets every month, open to all.   This is the group that takes all business decisions.

Michael has an annual report, 8 pages.   Available if there is interest.

h)    Hungary

Agota has run 2 fundamentals in late 2015 & early 2016.   Saci was involved in the 2nd one and may become another active teacher.  Csaba may also do some teaching.

Szilvi is organising monthly meetings.

Organising CCI always gives us a boost. 

We have a website – also in English.  And a facebook page.

A young coco in Hungary created a google map with teardrops for co-counsellors.   Wondering if this might be extended worldwide.

Hoping to go through an accreditation process which might open up the possibility of extra funding for those wanting to learn co-counselling.

Agota has a personal thought that basic coco might be extended by adding elements of Mindfulness and other techniques.   The goal is to spread more awareness in the outside world.s

This CCI used a Google form to collect info on travel needs of participants.   It worked well.   [Comment by Kim: any data entered to Google is visible to Google as a corporation.  This put me off using this method.]

Magda: there is a person-centered counselling community.   We are hoping to give some basic info on co-counselling to this community.

i)      Ireland

No recent fundamentals.   Last year (2015) was a personal financial risk for the organisers.  In the end it was OK since another group came in to fill the remaining space, and there was a number of late bookings, but the few remaining Irish co-cos are not wanting to take on that risk again.

Declan has contacted Termonfeckin about a possible date in 2020 but this is not definite;  Ireland might drop out of the cycle, but it might not.   Especially if there is support from other communities.  Wait for more news!

j)      Other countries and cross-national

Joke and Agota expect to teach in Sweden some time in the next year.   Open to support from other countries if people are interested.

Books:  Fred wrote a book.  There are many other books in different countries and people are working on translations.

Agota would like to follow up on the event in Munster in March 2016 which included the Netherlands and Agota from Hungary.   Have a vision to create an international team.   We would like to involve people from other countries whenever language permits.  

France?   Idea from Celia.   Marlies has one contact.

Spain? Ask Jenni

2 Coco – new name

[not discussed during the meeting]

3 Next CCIs

2-6 Nov 2016 Israel

18-23 April 2017 USA

30 July – 5 August 2017 Netherlands.   Teachers workshop starting on Fri beforehand.

Mid-Jan 2018 New Zealand. Same venue as last time.

April 2018 USA.   Usually 3rd week. Dates not yet fixed

28 July – 4 August 2018  Scotland.  Possibly a teacher’s workshop after that.

2019 will be Germany – just beginning to think about it. Not confirmed yet.

2020 would be Ireland – not yet confirmed.

Other gatherings (not CCIs)

New Zealand has summer and winter gatherings

McCoCo in Scotland every May

4 New name for business meeting

Agota: Would like to change “business meeting” to “community meeting” on the grounds that “business meeting” puts off newcomers.   And that this is mainly a gathering of the global community.  I want a name which expresses that. 

2 people object: 

JP Want to have a name that reaches out, rather than internal.  Do like to replace “business meeting”.

Csaba: like “business meeting”.

Other ideas:  “Community Exchange”.  “Community sharing”.  “global community meeting”.

Suggested: all these ideas passed to organisers of next CCI. No need to take a decision here.    

5 Content structure of co-counselling

[not discussed during the meeting]

6 CCI finance guideline

Alan:  I produced this document, initially as an informal response to a request, then I generalised it.   It is a checklist of things to think about when planning a CCI, mainly from the perspective of Money but also covering other aspects e.g. room registration:  CCI as a small business.   (It doesn’t have anything to say about actual co-counselling)

It has had a few comments from Verena and has also been seen by JP, Saci and Emmy.   Not yet seen by USA or NZ.   It is available if anyone wants to see it.   I feel the simplest way forward is that it can remain as a personal suggestion;  it could be “adopted” as a guideline (after further rounds of comments) if there is desire to do that, but not sure if that would be worthwhile.   It contains no rules: suggestions only.

It could be put on a website.  JP would like to add some material on negotiating skills.

Saci: very thorough and very detailed.