Welcome,
We are women who are making the choice to flow our life energy to the purpose of NGL: we see the NGL framework as a path to individual and collective liberation.
We also come from a background of ‘being othered’ in subtle or overt ways; which means we have internalized to various degrees particular patterns and beliefs which are hindering our full contribution. They are difficult to notice and overcome; especially so in isolation. In 2022, with the invitation of Miki Kashtan, we embarked on an experiment in peer-leadership support that so far has taken many iterations, trials and learnings.
Currently, our experiment is largely based on the question of what it takes to build a sister solidarity within NGL and across geographies and cultures that we span. We are acutely aware that recognizing, countering and subverting the ways that we enact or absorb patterns of systemic de-prioritization becomes more possible within a solidarity network.
The experiment is an application of the Power, Privilege, and Liberation for All framework that’s been developed within NGL, and within this, the work we do is aiming to support us in growing our leadership and natural authority.
We believe that us growing in leadership capacity and natural authority will increase the collective capacity in NGL to continue with the experiment of realigning humanity with life.
We believe that upholding women’s leadership in the areas of liberation and nonviolence is a revolutionary path towards a livable future, because of the specific ways that the subordination of women has been integral and primary to patriarchy. Furthermore, we see that systemically and globally the leadership and empowerment of people of certain cultures and backgrounds is prioritized. More critically, this is one aspect of a deep pattern of resources being disproportionately allocated to people who already have more access to resources. We would like to counter this pattern, in the ways we have access and capacity to, to empower PhOCO* women in leadership in NGL.
We see that it is imperative to focus our energy where we already have influence. These are the openings to support us experiencing and cultivating our empowerment and building from strengths rather than falling into disempowered beliefs, giving up or being overwhelmed by the complexity and magnitude of the systemic phenomena that impact our everyday lives.
We start with the vision that is most within capacity, to offer energy without being overwhelming.
We are in flow with each other and robust in the ways that we support and track each other as well as collectively hold each other's liberation.
Within this close-knit net of relationships, we are practicing living the fully empowered version of ourselves and are making bold steps in bringing our leadership to NGL.
PhOCO* women of NGL are fully empowered, in their natural authority, speaking, acting and thinking from the place of full trust in their wisdom. They are at the forefront of NGL, stewarding and carrying the lineage forward.
When there is a request from outside NGL it is easy for us to send PhOCO women as leads for those projects.
Across the world individuals, groups, organisations, and communities, across all social divisions, are actively liberating themselves and one another from the grip of patriarchal conditioning, leaning on the leadership of women to bring forth their full essence, genuine self-confidence and unique combination of gifts and limitations, and walking together as part of a vast network of trust that supports individuals and communities in the re-mothering of a world structured upon narratives that are oriented to needs and natural limits.
Co-creating a liberative and mutually supportive environment to unleash the creativity of women from PhOCO groups to increase NGL’s collective capacity to respond to a world in crisis.
One sister designed an experiment for us to collectively work with patterning of self-doubt, to notice and look at practices for integrating trust in ourselves and choice in how we act in the world.
We have also begun holding and offering public events, specifically focusing on offering every other one of the monthly NGL Introductory calls, as a way to cultivate self-trust by making more visible the unique gifts we offer, supporting and shaping NGL as a whole by infusing the wisdom of women from PhOCO groups.
When we first started, we were entrusted with stewarding a finite fund that made this program possible. We have made choices in relation to how to steward this fund in a way that cares about the NGL community’s sustainability while also navigating to make empowered choices in relation to our learning and leadership.
In 2025, we collectively discerned to have one person attend a Nonviolent Communication International Intensive Training (NVC IIT), discerning both how she would represent NGL as well as GS offering finances to make it possible. We have decided to send a second member to an IIT in 2026, and we are planning to support her to prepare to present NGL at the IIT, as often people in IIT’s are curious about NGL and we see this as an opportunity to support building natural authority.
When we were together at the NGL summer gathering in 2025, we started to experiment with identifying phenomena that are otherwise likely invisible to those from PhoCNO groups, and bringing our experiences back to the community. We met each day to articulate the patterns, conditionings, etc, that we recognised in relation to systemic phenomena. By doing this, we aim to feed the collective learning and awareness and increase collective holding, coherence and togetherness within the whole community.
We mourn that, at present, the experiment is limited by several factors, and thus it is likely to take several iterations before we cross the accessibility barriers sufficiently, if we ever do. Here are some of the limitations we are aware of, most of which are likely to continue for years still:
We are well aware that, even if we come from PhOCO groups and are impacted by our social training being from these groups, we also have a lot of privilege that allows us to be engaged in NGL. We hold a lot of mourning that currently we don't have the collective capacity to share our experience and walk the liberation path with women who have much less access to resources than we do.
Existing NGL materials are heavily text-based, and thus may easily act as barriers related to education. And they are mostly available in the English language and therefore not accessible to non-English speakers or for people who are less at ease with reading or have different learning styles.
As in all areas in NGL, this program is experimental. We expect there to be voids, imperfections and unforeseen challenges because of reduced capacity, patterns of people from PhOCO groups of overstretching, having self-doubt etc. Our intention is to name and hold the voids, imperfections and challenges together, and discern if there are within-capacity pathways to attend to them.
The program is currently funded by a one-time estate donation that makes additional money available to NGL’s Financial Gift Hub (FGH) toward our purpose. Simultaneously, we invite contributions (please mention it’s for the Global Sisterhood while contributing money) from anyone reading this description who is excited about this program and has any capacity to contribute financially to its long term viability.
Nonviolent Global Liberation Community, 2025 - nglcommunity.org. You can contact the team via email: gs-leadership-tier@nglcommunity.org
*PhOCO: The following is a condensed excerpt from the packet, Restoring Togetherness in the Context of Power Differences: ‘PhOCO is an acronym that came into being in conversations between members of the Global Sisterhood, Aurélia Saint-Just and Menaka Neotia, and Miki.
… The term that we eventually chose after much conversation is “phenotypically or culturally othered,” which is quite a mouthful and led us to invent an acronym: “phoco” … [It is] descriptive and is not a label. Once the term phoco came into being, we were also looking for a term to point to those who are not phoco, the ones who function as the implicit norm in relation to which some are othered. Because of this, we chose the term phocno, which stands for “phenotypically or culturally normative.”’
To read more about this term and why we chose it, as well as overall how we think about differences across power and privilege, read the packet from which this excerpt came, “Restoring Togetherness in the Context of Power Differences: A Conceptual Framework”. The term is introduced in the subsection on “Use of Language” (currently on page 27), and then used onward throughout the packet.