The aim of this thesis is to identify strategies to incentivize just community development in contexts affected by emotional distress and conflict. The original focus honed in on how to incentivize the process in the community itself. Personal interactions with the facilitators of community development during primary research then led to the realization of a previously neglected facet of this case: the emotional distress experienced by the facilitators of community processes themselves. Frustration, loneliness, and tiredness consistently affect the effectiveness of their work. In order to take care of others and facilitate meaningful relationships that generate just community development, community workers need firstly to take care of their individual emotions. That is how Intertwining responds to this complex dynamic of emotional distress, providing a methodological approach and implementable toolkit, to be used individually and collectively.

About Intertwining

As community worker, taking care of your emotional health is crucial to being able to give the best of you, and to inspire others to bring the best of themselves to the community. This way, meaningful connections emerge; letting go of judgement, cynicism, and fear, and letting come curiosity, compassion, and courage. This path needs to be walked both individually and as a community. We need to pick practices that let us cultivate new behaviors, to remember that we love what we do, keeping our motivation high so we can provide a fruitful atmosphere for the emergence of a future that we build together.

The toolkit includes a set of posters and cards with activities that will help you facilitate the process of incentivizing emotional self-care within your team. In group sessions and individually, team members will set the path of their self discovery and reflection. You will make an agreement and set their own rules on how to include these activities in their daily routines, both as a group, and individually.

You will find activities to develop team and team members’ capacity to listen, by learning how to listen from the inner self; activities to understand the value of observation to create meaningful reflection; activities to train the mind to be holistic and detail oriented at the same time; activities to learn how to use breathing as a bridge between mind and body; and of course, activities to help to incorporate all these new habits in your team and teammates daily lives.

This toolkit was developed based on the models and work of three primary authors: Otto Scharmer, Margaret Wheatley, and B.J. Fogg. Their models and perspectives were adapted and blended to generate tools to incentivize emotional self-care for community workers.

The activities in this toolkit are tailored to various motivational states and are divided into cards classified into three categories: The Jester, The Explorer, and The Warrior.

The Intertwining toolkit proved to be able to start conversations about emotional health between community leaders in Savannah, Georgia. The first testing with the target users inspired one of the community leaders to bring the conversation about emotional self-care to community workers and members of different organizations in the city. Outgoing from these initial discussions, we ran another testing session that resulted in the self-proclaimed commitment of local community workers to keep addressing the topic in their daily activities. Most of the participants wanted to have immediate access to the toolkit to spread the word about it and start the process.

The participants expressed that the articulation of the toolkit allows honest and free conversations to emerge from a deep reflective level. They felt that the activities performed and the format of the workshop itself created a potential space for mutual support—something that wouldn’t otherwise happen in their busy schedules. Some of them said they were skeptical in the beginning, but once the activities started, they got involved and interested in what others had to express. They felt connected and included.