Witnessing Resistance to Human Suffering, Hardship, & Oppression

Wednesday, December 2nd 2015 | 10am-5pm

Woodwards Skyroom

Lunch will be provided

Whenever people are oppressed they resist. People always fight back- but not in ways recognized by alternative approach to work with ‘suering’, from a decolonizing anti-oppression stance, which focuses on the resistance of victims of violence and oppression, as opposed to attending primarily to the details and effects of the events, which can be harmful for both the person and the front-line worker. Resisting most helping professionals, or psychology and community work talk. This workshop presents an neutral and medicalized language, we will name poverty, racism, rape culture and other systemic contexts of social injustice.

All-Day Staff Day For Relief Staff

Women Resisting Violence: We always fight back!

Wednesday, November 25th, 2015

Time: 8:00am – 4:00pm

Location: Executive Suites Hotel – Grand Ballroom
4201 Lougheed Highway, Burnaby BC

In this workshop Vikki presents an alternative approach to work with ‘trauma’ and violence, which focuses on women’s ever present resistance to violence and oppression.

North Vancouver Parent Advisory Council

Community Conversation Series on Youth Mental Wellness

Embracing Hope: Youth, Substance Use and Mental Health — Challenges and Strategies.

Wednesday, November 18

6:45 P.M.

 

Re-Imagining Our Responses to Hardship, Oppression and Trauma

A two day conference with
Vikki Reynolds, PhD and Ken Hardy, PhD
Thursday, November 12 and Friday, November 13
Rochester Educational Opportunity Center (REOC)
Rochester, NY
9:00am – 4:00pm

In this two-day workshop, internationally known presenters Vikki Reynolds, PhD and Ken Hardy, PhD will discuss how clinicians and community workers can develop greater awareness of issues related to power, privilege and accountability, how clinical and community workers

might differently understand people’s responses to hardship and trauma (current and historical) and how helping professionals might re-imagine effective interventions that respond to the social contexts that deeply influence people’s lives.

 

Being Trauma Informed in the Social Service Sector Conference

October 20-21, 2015

Responding to “trauma” with justice-doing: Stories of sustainability

Vikki will offer learnings from decades of activist informed therapeutic work with people who are marginalized and suffer from abuses of power and structural oppression, including survivors of torture and sexualized violence. A witnessing approach to this work invites workers to take positions for justice-doing and against neutrality, and consider the
complexities of “trauma” from a social justice frame. Stories of inspiration and transformation of clients and workers that are evoked in this approach counter the prescription for burnout or vicarious trauma. Participants will be invited to consider their own stories of resistance
to oppression and suffering, and enact practices of witnessing that leave us sustained and enlivened in the work.

 

Second Annual Social Justice Forum

Social Jusctice Activism and Community Work: Tensions, Points of Connection and Hopeful Skepticism

Thursday, September 24

11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m.

Room 205 of the Odeon Building at Laurier’s Brantford campus.

The event is open to the public, and admission is free. In this talk Reynolds will invite a critique of the tenuous, strained, yet hopeful relationship between social justice activism and community work

In addition to her free public talk, Reynolds will be facilitating a workshop on campus during the afternoon of Sept. 24, and a full-day professional development workshop in the Brantford community on Friday, Sept. 25. The workshops will address matters of concern for those who work with people experiencing poverty, violence and oppression.

Portland Hotel Society Staff Training

Justice Doing in Community Work

September 16, 2015

10 am to 5pm

Woodwards Skyroom

Vancouver, B.C.

 

Mind the Gap6 2015

An Annual Congress on Response-Based Practice

May 6, 7, & 8, 2015.

Cowichan Bay, B.C.

Keynote: Social justice activism & community work: Tensions, points of connection & hopeful scepticism
Vikki invites a critique of the tenuous, strained, yet hopeful relationship between social justice activism and community work & therapy. We will addresses the tensions of community work replicating oppressive practices, and invite a critique of our practice with an aim to move us more in line with our collective ethics for justice-doing. This critique entails addressing our positioning in relation to power, privilege and disadvantage; resisting neutrality and taking overt positions for justice-doing; naming and beginning to respond to white supremacy and colonialism in our traditions of practice; problematizing our relationship to social control and social change in our work; resisting competition as affronts to our solidarity; and problematizing the role of academia in relation to justice-doing.

For more information, please contact Dr. Cathy Richardson

Email: cathyresponds@gmail.com

Nation Victims of Crime Awareness Week

Resisting Burnout Self Care Workshop

Okanagan College

Penticton Campus

April 23, 2015

8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Joint Team Day

March 16, 2015

10 am to 5pm

Woodwards Skyroom

Vancouver, B.C.

 

Presents

Peak Speaks:

 

Colin James Sanders, PhD, RCC in conversation
with Vikki Reynolds, PhD, RCC

Deconstructing “Addiction” Mythology:
From Chemical Dependency to Re-authoring Identities at Peak House.

March 20, 2015, 1:00-4:00 P.M.
City University of Seattle, Vancouver.

Suite 310-789 West Pender, Vancouver.
For more information call 604-253-2187 or www.peakhouse.ca
Tickets available in advance $60 in advance (follow link below) or $75 at the door
http://peakspeaks2015.eventbrite.ca

In this conversation, Colin traces the theoretical and philosophical evolution of Vancouver’s “Peak House”, a
residential program started in 1988 for 13-18 year olds struggling with substance use and related factors, from
a 12-Step philosophy and bio-medical, disease and recovery based, influenced model to a community informed
by ideas and practices relating to social justice, anti-oppression, sacred, and collaborative, narrative therapy
informed community.

Peak House, now entering its 27th year of continual operation, remains an illustration of the sort of liberating
and transforming community that becomes possible when there exists a vision backed by commitment,
patience and perseverance.
This conversation will touch upon and trace the following themes:

• The practice of therapy as a political act, a form of resistance against oppression
• The practice of therapy as a sacred act and encounter with the Other
• Substance use as a social problem not an individual pathology
• “Addiction” as absence, not presence
• Re-authoring and externalizing problem practices
• Witnessing group practices
• Ways of honouring and active promotion of youth knowledge and youth wisdom
• Creation of counter-documents in resistance to deficit identities
• Co-creating a socially just, LGBT2SQ+ positive space and community