Welcome to CFOR

Our aim and hope is to contribute to conflict resolution, truth and reconciliation, transitional justice and violence prevention.  CFOR refers to the ‘force of community’.  We facilitate communities to process current and historic tensions and momentary interactions, revealing pathways forward.

Our focus at CFOR is on facilitating awareness in community interactions. As societies, we can grow in personal and collective awareness, so that we do not get so easily pulled apart into divisiveness, or get swept up into cycles of violence. 

During the surge of divisiveness in our times, it is easy to fall into hopelessness. It is participants of our forums who have repeatedly blown our minds, inspired us with meaning and hope. Not ‘pie in the sky’ hope – but hope that comes from witnessing that it is possible to process our history, reckon with the reality of what separates us, and discover what connects us and propels us. 

Our experience has included working in Croatia and other parts of the former Yugoslavia for many years in forums among people who had been on opposite sides of the violence in the early 90’s.  

We are currently facilitating large forums in Rwanda among perpetrators and survivors of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi, who feel called to go further with the process of reconciliation in order to protect the next generation. 

In South Africa, in a township of Durban, we offer facilitation and training to support community leadership, and the need to go further with processing the legacy of Apartheid.  

In Zimbabwe, CFOR has been invited to support Forums for facilitated interactions among community members and local civil society organisations at this turning point of history. 

CFOR has also facilitated numerous forums in the UK and Europe about the legacy of WW I and WW II, the holocaust, and Stalin, as well our history of colonialism, in relation to current issues of migration.

We are also committed to addressing the current backlash against advancements in race awareness in the United States, in relation to our unprocessed history of genocide and slavery.

We document some of our work in books, articles and film, in order to study and begin to demonstrate how such interactions using methods of ‘worldwork’ (Arny Mindell) could become part of a central strategy for transitional justice, and post-conflict and post-genocide recovery, and for prevention of violence.

CFOR also offers training including a modular training programme ‘Facilitation for Leaders’.