Social Change and NVC - Summary

"We want people to know how to create peace in their relationships - and also to know the power they have to create structures that support compassionate interactions, compassionate exchanges of resources, and compassionate justice."

- Marshall Rosenberg

Social change is a key focus in Nonviolent Communication. Once we've learned through NVC that it's possible to connect to life within ourselves and enrich our relationships with others, we may yearn to bring NVC consciousness to transform our social structures - corporate, judicial, governmental and others - that don't support peaceful, life-giving connections between us. In Speak Peace in a World of Conflict: What You Say Next Will Change Your World, Marshall ends this book hoping we become familiar with restorative justice and radically different economic systems.

BCNCC supports multiple definitions of social change. To meet our needs for inclusion and openness to a diversity of ideas we've listed a few definitions here and invite you to add your comments to this page.

Please check out the articles, interviews and information under Areas of Interest and let us know if there is a topic you're keenly interested in. We invite your ideas and suggestions. Email us at reply@bcncc.ca

What is Social Change?

"People having the internal and external resources to live fulfilling and peaceful lives."
- Katrina Morrison Kaneda, Vernon

"For me, it entails contributing to greater equality in society such that the needs of all people are considered equal. I believe that using NVC to communicate is an effective strategy to help facilitate this, because the essence of the model involves empathizing with the needs of all people regardless of their age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, socio-economic-status, religious or political beliefs, or whether or not they happen to suffer from a physical and/or mental illness/disability."
- Chris Rowe, Port Moody

"Social change is an experience within a person one moment to the next, in one thought at a time, in one conversation at a time, in one action/reaction at a time. Social change is how we are hearing ourselves and what we are telling ourselves, therefore what we are reflecting in our world. This is what we bring to any connection."
- Renee Lindstrom, Victoria

"Social Change is the conscious, concerted, and strategic effort to transform society, including institutions, practices, policies and beliefs, so that human needs and the needs of all life matter and are held with balance, mutuality, interdependence and care."
- From the website of Facilitate Change: An Experiential Program on Nonviolent Communication for Organization Development and Social Change, based in New York. For more information, check out http://www.facilitatechange.org

"For me NVC and social change is political. To what extent do decisions that affect our lives meet human needs. It's about shifting the paradigm from domination to partnership and that suggests a radical egalitarianism = Everyone's needs matter. And it's empowering, too. We, as individuals and in groups, can all take responsibility for meeting our needs, and work to increase the likelihood for many more people's needs to be met."
- Mika Maniwa, Vancouver