Decide Together: Building Collaborative Community
an online story sharing session
Let’s start building a sense of community ahead of the in-person event and explore how we can support one another in making collaborative decisions more often – starting now.
📅 When: Tuesday February 4th at 12-2pm EST / 18-20 CET
🌍 Where: Online (details provided upon registration)
As part of our Decide Together event in May 2025, we’re hosting an online storytelling session which focuses on our visions, successes, and challenges with collaborative decision making in our work and daily lives. This session is an opportunity to connect with others passionate about creating a world where dissent is received as a gift, power is shared, and everyone can contribute. We invite deep listening and honest sharing with the goal of increasing clarity about what small steps we can take toward increasing our openness to and fluency with collaborative decision making.
How much does it cost?
The organizing team offers the online session as a gift, meaning no one is required to pay to participate. We ask people to gift us money to help cover our costs and some of our living expenses. We are taking on more risk by choosing not to charge people for participating in our events because we really want to move away from capitalism. This is a small step towards our dream of a world where resources flow freely to where they are needed, also called the gift economy.
We invite you to choose an amount to gift us that considers both your needs and ours, including any funding you can use from an organization or program. You can gift us money even if you don’t participate, and you are welcome to participate even if you are not able to gift us any money.
The easiest way to send us money is through our fundraiser on whydonate.
If you need more guidance in choosing an amount, information about the gift economy or more options to send us financial gifts, please visit our gifting page.
Who is holding the session?
Magda Barańska – I feel a deep calling to contribute to making decisions that work for everyone, because I see how much more alive and effective groups become when everyone’s needs matter. I believe humans intrinsically enjoy finding solutions that care for everyone’s needs and what gets in the way are unsupportive beliefs and lack of skills. I’m passionate about inspiring and supporting transformation of such beliefs and teaching the skills that make interdependent collaboration possible. I enjoy offering softness and acceptance to free up the energy that gets stuck in self-judgments and self-doubts. When facilitating I bring faith that integration is possible and trust in the wisdom and creativity of a group. It gives me great joy to contribute to co-creation through deep listening to everything that is shared and through the integration of dissent and concerns. I aim for each encounter and decision in my life to become an example of the change I want to see in the world. My ongoing sources of learning include collaborating in diverse projects, parenting and inner transformation.
Rinah Rachel Galper – a seasoned coach and healer, consultant, connector, licensed educator, ordained clergy, facilitator, and a change and peace maker with over three decades experience working with diverse youth and adults across educational, community, and organizational settings. She is a trained Reiki master in the Usui Shiki Ryoho tradition, end of life doula, ritualist, writer, facilitator and nature guide. Rinah has a Masters in Education, an Associate degree in Expressive Arts, and two ordinations as a Kohenet and a Maggid. Joyoushout is an evolution of Rinah’s intersectional work for social justice, teaching, healing, creative, and spiritual practice and is informed by her personal journey as an elder, queer, white identified Jew, liberation ally, neurodivergent learner and unlearner, truth-teller, storyteller, writer, and woman in recovery. Rinah owes a debt of deep gratitude to her mother, Miriam Thompson (of blessed memory), a trailblazer in educational reform, labor organizing, civil and human rights, and worker education for over 50 years, and countless mentors and co-conspirators past and present.