Who we are
We are a community of people passionate about transforming our current global crises into a world that works for all, based on principles of collaboration and willingness.
We are aware of how dominant structures of patriarchy and our social location affect our capacity to liberate ourselves and move towards vision.
We are fueled by a sense of possibility and the willingness to share risks as we do our work. We are committed to embedding nonviolence, as a set of approaches, applications, principles, and practices that we call “the NGL framework” into all we do.
This includes developing and applying a framework for attending to power differences of all kinds. We continually aim to take practical steps to apply our commitments to our own and others’ experimenting in bringing about our vision.
We are lifelong apprentices on the path of deepening our practices of liberation, and increasing our capacity to embrace a truly global perspective caring for all life.
We want our work and learning to be of service to others, including especially those working with the global crises of the world to bring about systemic transformation on all levels.
We want to provide a home to change agents to sustain their own liberation, find support, and resource their learning and growth. We love the opportunity to learn by doing and to align means with ends.
We want to be part of a community where we can feel the integration of nonviolence all around us, where we are encouraged to stay within willingness, where we celebrate and mourn, and where we build trust in support of working together for a larger purpose.
We want to restore, within and outside our community, our individual and collective capacity to live in choice, togetherness, and flow within the means of our planet.
Outward Facing People
Alper Süzer
*“Even the most luminous vision isn’t enough energy, by itself, to pull us out of the patriarchal “trance” with its many “grooves.” We need a stronger force field than the very gentle invitation…
Eddy Quinn
Eddy is passionate about supporting the skill and system building needed for people to manifest life-aligned intentions tangibly, practically and efficiently. In his work with…
Erin Mychele Selover
Erin was raised by Irish American Labor Organizers in Detroit, Michigan in the late 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. As a young person she witnessed first hand the economic impacts of neoliberal…
Emma Quayle
I am originally from Cornwall, UK, where I grew up in a working-class family on the rugged windswept coasts of West Penwith. My parents brought a necessary and contagious…
Fabian Kirsch
I am intrigued by the question of what masculinity would look like outside a patriarchal system. I believe that the answer is both beyond imagination for most of us and also something that…
Mariam Gafforio
I envision a world where humans can collaborate with one another to care for basic needs and difficult dilemmas, attend to conflict with care and purpose, and live in…
Menaka Neotia
Menaka is deeply engaged in exploring the integration of the Liberation for all lens within the Power and Privilege (P&P) work that we are seeding in all of our teams in…
Miki Kashtan
Miki Kashtan is a practical visionary pursuing a world that works for all, exploring the application of the principles and tools of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to social transformation. She…
Roni Wiener
I dedicate my energy to accelerating the global shift toward decisions that care for all life. I spend most of my time developing, teaching, and facilitating decision-making processes and…
Verene Nicolas
The question of how to create conditions for women to have their full place and their voice heard in society was a key preoccupation of my 20s. This quickly expanded to include all humans too…
Selene Aswell
Selene grew up mixed race, longing to belong to a place and a people, splitting her time between the deep South in Savannah, Georgia, and the Pacific Northwest, in the United States…
Internally Focused People
Fox
Originally from Ireland, Fox began untethering from normative society as he explored alterative schooling systems, spending some time at A.S. Neill’s Summerhill in England and founding Ireland’s first democratic school based on the Sudbury model.
Fox’s untethering deepened through his housing activism in Dublin as a member of its squatting community. It was through his interest in the Sudbury model that he first came to appreciate the potential human systems. In NGL he found an intoxicating mix of a commitment to nonviolence and experimenting with human systems and he is committed to realising their potential within the context of a land-based NGL community.
These days he is increasingly seeing his life as an ongoing series of experiments with truth. Currently his experiments are focusing on recovering from male-training and the practice of impact sharing.
He enjoys reading fiction that supports readers to explore visionary possibilities. His favourite book is ‘Parable of the Sower’ by Octavia E. Butler.
Fox firmly believes that in order to transform the current state of the planet we need to experiment with moving beyond the traditional patriarchal unit of the nuclear family and form affinity groups based on shared purpose and a commitment to each other’s and collective liberation. To this end he is currently vagabonding with his podling mate Sabrina and exploring pod forming with another NGL member.
Within NGL he does miscellaneous tasks including the internal community newsletter, holding one of NGL’s financial storehouses and collaborating with others on the Human Capacity team to create within capacity pathways for people to land in NGL and step into more co-holding of its visionary purpose.
Fox
Originally from Ireland, Fox began untethering from normative society as he explored alterative schooling systems, spending some time at A.S. Neill’s Summerhill in England and founding Ireland’s first democratic school based on the Sudbury model.
Fox’s untethering deepened through his housing activism in Dublin as a member of its squatting community. It was through his interest in the Sudbury model that he first came to appreciate the potential human systems. In NGL he found an intoxicating mix of a commitment to nonviolence and experimenting with human systems and he is committed to realising their potential within the context of a land-based NGL community.
These days he is increasingly seeing his life as an ongoing series of experiments with truth. Currently his experiments are focusing on recovering from male-training and the practice of impact sharing.
He enjoys reading fiction that supports readers to explore visionary possibilities. His favourite book is ‘Parable of the Sower’ by Octavia E. Butler.
Fox firmly believes that in order to transform the current state of the planet we need to experiment with moving beyond the traditional patriarchal unit of the nuclear family and form affinity groups based on shared purpose and a commitment to each other’s and collective liberation. To this end he is currently vagabonding with his podling mate Sabrina and exploring pod forming with another NGL member.
Within NGL he does miscellaneous tasks including the internal community newsletter, holding one of NGL’s financial storehouses and collaborating with others on the Human Capacity team to create within capacity pathways for people to land in NGL and step into more co-holding of its visionary purpose.
Madalyn Loustalot
I was raised on the island of Oahu in the kind of community that arises both out of necessity under patriarchal capitalism and out of a shared defiant love to raise kids outside of traditional family systems.
I share in feeling pulled by the vision Miki has articulated of a world that works for all – one where the main organising principle of life is around needs, where our creativity and ingenuity are engaged at the level of strategy to meet those needs and where choice, togetherness and flow are restored.
After moving to Europe to attend university (to avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in the U.S.) I decided I wanted to study ‘the gap’ – to intimately know the systems and mechanisms that would need to be bridged to. I attained a B.S. in Economics with a minor in Environmental Engineering in Spain and then went on to study an M.S. in Sustainable Development with a focus on re-commoning resources and risk distribution within global food systems in Belgium. I am interested in the ways that we come together to build systems that restore choice, togetherness and flow and within this, I am actively engaged in experiments and explorations in liberation logistics. with the deep seeded Gandhian belief that “means are ends in the making”, that how we get there matters.
I found my way to Miki and to NGL through the Organisational Function and Collaborative Leadership activist coaching calls that Miki was offering to Extinction Rebellion (XR) in 2020. At the time I had joined the Trainings team to create and offer workshops and trainings to support upskilling working groups locally and globally (online) in topics like facilitation, decision making, regenerative cultures and, nonviolent direct action and strategy. After two years of co-holding the coaching calls with Miki in XR, Mars and I also transitioned to holding the Nonviolent Activism for Liberation Coaching Calls.
Within NGL I work closely with Miki to bring rigour and reverence to nurturing pathways that support the availability and growth of Miki’s body of work through co-holding tasks like scheduling, project tracking and editing while stewarding a growing support team for Miki as a visionary leader to be increasingly able to focus only on what is within her non redundant capacity to do. In addition, I hold functions within the Lineage Experiment Holding team where I have the opportunity to apprentice under Emma about conscious design thinking, the Structural Implementation Team (SIT) where I am co-holding the transition to a new structure within NGL as well as being actively engaged within the Mycelium Experiment.
Madalyn Loustalot
I was raised on the island of Oahu in the kind of community that arises both out of necessity under patriarchal capitalism and out of a shared defiant love to raise kids outside of traditional family systems.
I share in feeling pulled by the vision Miki has articulated of a world that works for all – one where the main organising principle of life is around needs, where our creativity and ingenuity are engaged at the level of strategy to meet those needs and where choice, togetherness and flow are restored.
After moving to Europe to attend university (to avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt in the U.S.) I decided I wanted to study ‘the gap’ – to intimately know the systems and mechanisms that would need to be bridged to. I attained a B.S. in Economics with a minor in Environmental Engineering in Spain and then went on to study an M.S. in Sustainable Development with a focus on re-commoning resources and risk distribution within global food systems in Belgium. I am interested in the ways that we come together to build systems that restore choice, togetherness and flow and within this, I am actively engaged in experiments and explorations in liberation logistics. with the deep seeded Gandhian belief that “means are ends in the making”, that how we get there matters.
I found my way to Miki and to NGL through the Organisational Function and Collaborative Leadership activist coaching calls that Miki was offering to Extinction Rebellion (XR) in 2020. At the time I had joined the Trainings team to create and offer workshops and trainings to support upskilling working groups locally and globally (online) in topics like facilitation, decision making, regenerative cultures and, nonviolent direct action and strategy. After two years of co-holding the coaching calls with Miki in XR, Mars and I also transitioned to holding the Nonviolent Activism for Liberation Coaching Calls.
Within NGL I work closely with Miki to bring rigour and reverence to nurturing pathways that support the availability and growth of Miki’s body of work through co-holding tasks like scheduling, project tracking and editing while stewarding a growing support team for Miki as a visionary leader to be increasingly able to focus only on what is within her non redundant capacity to do. In addition, I hold functions within the Lineage Experiment Holding team where I have the opportunity to apprentice under Emma about conscious design thinking, the Structural Implementation Team (SIT) where I am co-holding the transition to a new structure within NGL as well as being actively engaged within the Mycelium Experiment.
Meike Clever
I joined NGL in 2018 after attending the first NGL retreat in Poland. At the time I was co-leading a community cycling project working for social change, having left my career as a plasma physicist after becoming disillusioned with nuclear fusion research.
Grappling with how to create fully collaborative organisations, I was longing for community and learning, and drawn by the idea of applying NVC principles with a systemic perspective.
Another one of my major focus areas after leaving physics is what I would now call “liberatory learning”, which I enjoyed exploring at the cycling project teaching cycle mechanics. That is probably why, after leaving the cycling project at the end of 2020, triggered by a combination of burn out and the pandemic, I decided to do a Montessori Diploma. Now I am finding myself, once more, in a time of re-orientation and am very nourished by being able to bring my gifts to NGL alongside exploring my liberation edges.
I am part of the Information Flow Maintenance Crew (IFMC), where I bring my ease and experience in working with computers and software to the shift from control to transparency. I am also co-holding NGL’s transition to the new structure, setting up a support team for Emma to free up her non-redundant capacities within NGL, and am part of setting up the Lineage Experiment Holding Team guided by Emma.
Moria Merriweather
I live in San Jose, California, in a lower middle class neighborhood, where many of my neighbors are refugees from Vietnam. I live in an old mobile home that I own, and I’ve lived here for over 30 years.
I’m in my 60’s, so I have many life experiences. I’m involved with growing food, whole plant foods, and DIY body care of many kinds. I understand life around me as conscious and in communication.
I am mildly involved with Information Flow Maintenance Crew and Uma Support Team.
Meike Clever
I joined NGL in 2018 after attending the first NGL retreat in Poland. At the time I was co-leading a community cycling project working for social change, having left my career as a plasma physicist after becoming disillusioned with nuclear fusion research.
Grappling with how to create fully collaborative organisations, I was longing for community and learning, and drawn by the idea of applying NVC principles with a systemic perspective.
Another one of my major focus areas after leaving physics is what I would now call “liberatory learning”, which I enjoyed exploring at the cycling project teaching cycle mechanics. That is probably why, after leaving the cycling project at the end of 2020, triggered by a combination of burn out and the pandemic, I decided to do a Montessori Diploma. Now I am finding myself, once more, in a time of re-orientation and am very nourished by being able to bring my gifts to NGL alongside exploring my liberation edges.
I am part of the Information Flow Maintenance Crew (IFMC), where I bring my ease and experience in working with computers and software to the shift from control to transparency. I am also co-holding NGL’s transition to the new structure, setting up a support team for Emma to free up her non-redundant capacities within NGL, and am part of setting up the Lineage Experiment Holding Team guided by Emma.
Moria Merriweather
I live in San Jose, California, in a lower middle class neighborhood, where many of my neighbors are refugees from Vietnam. I live in an old mobile home that I own, and I’ve lived here for over 30 years.
I’m in my 60’s, so I have many life experiences. I’m involved with growing food, whole plant foods, and DIY body care of many kinds. I understand life around me as conscious and in communication.
I am mildly involved with Information Flow Maintenance Crew and Uma Support Team.
Sabrina Kley
I was first becoming more conscious of the world around me when I became a vegan in 2012. I started engaging in initiatives around reducing food waste (foodsharing), sustainable living, city gardening and vegan activism. I quit my job as a mobile app designer, worked in an organic kitchen and co-founded a vegan education café.
In that time I also came across NVC (Nonviolent Communication) and it changed my life once again. As I looked through the needs lens I found myself questioning basically everything about how our world functioned, from couple relationships to schools and governments.
Having little companionship on this way and lots of limitations I almost got lost in patriarchy again when I encountered NGL and dived in deeply.
Now I am vagabonding with my podling-mate Fox (we are in the process of forming a pod, an alternative model of relationship) with our shared purpose of creating pathways for people to join NGL’s intense experimentation – on land and online. I’m part of the Human Capacity Pathways team and the Mycelium web.
Shar Molloy
I have a vision of being present to the reality of our interconnectedness so that we act from care, trust and love for the wellbeing of all. What I long for is to be part of a community with its heart, eyes, and mind wide open to our present reality, whilst working towards co-creating a world that works for all.
A courageous community that can hold the grief and love and have structures to keep choosing vision and purpose in a way that honours nonviolence to its core. I long to share this next stage of my life with people who hold reverence and care for mother earth, for all kin and are present to the interconnectedness of life. I am grateful that NGL is a home for my longings and vision and am deeply thankful to be on this path of liberation.
I chose an unconventional pathway from aged 24, when I left a banking and finance career in Melbourne, Australia to pursue a vision of community and growth. My journey took me to living in an intentional community in Scotland and studying polarity therapy, whilst learning co-counselling and different forms of meditation including Vipassana. Upon returning to live in Australia I combined my business and finance skills with my longing for a ‘sustainable’ world to working in environmental organisations and a workers co-operative. I experienced the breakdown in communication of the social change groups I was involved in and the abandonment of purposeful visions and projects. I then trained extensively Joanna Macy’s ‘Work that Reconnects’, nonviolent communication and mediation and used these skills to successfully support environmental campaigns and community projects.
Joining NGL has provided the understanding of the devastating impacts of patriarchy and started my journey of liberation, one baby step at a time. Within NGL, I am currently supporting the NVC for liberation project and I also contribute the financial gift hub team and the packets project. I currently live in Tasmania, Australia and also spend the winter months in Darwin.
Sabrina Kley
I was first becoming more conscious of the world around me when I became a vegan in 2012. I started engaging in initiatives around reducing food waste (foodsharing), sustainable living, city gardening and vegan activism. I quit my job as a mobile app designer, worked in an organic kitchen and co-founded a vegan education café.
In that time I also came across NVC (Nonviolent Communication) and it changed my life once again. As I looked through the needs lens I found myself questioning basically everything about how our world functioned, from couple relationships to schools and governments.
Having little companionship on this way and lots of limitations I almost got lost in patriarchy again when I encountered NGL and dived in deeply.
Now I am vagabonding with my podling-mate Fox (we are in the process of forming a pod, an alternative model of relationship) with our shared purpose of creating pathways for people to join NGL’s intense experimentation – on land and online. I’m part of the Human Capacity Pathways team and the Mycelium web.
Shar Molloy
I have a vision of being present to the reality of our interconnectedness so that we act from care, trust and love for the wellbeing of all. What I long for is to be part of a community with its heart, eyes, and mind wide open to our present reality, whilst working towards co-creating a world that works for all.
A courageous community that can hold the grief and love and have structures to keep choosing vision and purpose in a way that honours nonviolence to its core. I long to share this next stage of my life with people who hold reverence and care for mother earth, for all kin and are present to the interconnectedness of life. I am grateful that NGL is a home for my longings and vision and am deeply thankful to be on this path of liberation.
I chose an unconventional pathway from aged 24, when I left a banking and finance career in Melbourne, Australia to pursue a vision of community and growth. My journey took me to living in an intentional community in Scotland and studying polarity therapy, whilst learning co-counselling and different forms of meditation including Vipassana. Upon returning to live in Australia I combined my business and finance skills with my longing for a ‘sustainable’ world to working in environmental organisations and a workers co-operative. I experienced the breakdown in communication of the social change groups I was involved in and the abandonment of purposeful visions and projects. I then trained extensively Joanna Macy’s ‘Work that Reconnects’, nonviolent communication and mediation and used these skills to successfully support environmental campaigns and community projects.
Joining NGL has provided the understanding of the devastating impacts of patriarchy and started my journey of liberation, one baby step at a time. Within NGL, I am currently supporting the NVC for liberation project and I also contribute the financial gift hub team and the packets project. I currently live in Tasmania, Australia and also spend the winter months in Darwin.
Sheryl Faria
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended Catholic schools and the University of California at Santa Barbara. My working life has been shaped by a combination of Sociology and a technical support background, from the telephone industry to information technology.
A cohouser since 2001, I learned about NVC through my neighbors and Bay Area Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC) as we soon discovered that our hopes and good intentions weren’t quite enough to help us live well together in our community! NVC has helped us so much to know and care for ourselves and each other, work with conflict, appreciate each other, and do our best to create a community that works for everyone as much as we possibly can.
Through NVC classes I came to know Miki, volunteered with other NVC teachers at a local prison, and worked as an administrative assistant for BayNVC, which eventually led me to NGL.
I am part of the Events Team – motivated to create and sustain, along with my team mates, a group of us who can collectively support each other and NGL events happening in the world.
Tricia Armstrong
Tricia (she/they) is a lifelong learner, passionate about practising and spreading ways of surrounding the patriarchal field with love so that the ways of human being and doing that do not support Life can transform.
Experience in different fields – educational, political, psychological, and religious/spiritual – led to discovering NVC and NGL.
Within NGL Online she/they serve as a storehouse, on a leader support team and on the Information Flow Maintenance Crew (IFMC).
Sheryl Faria
I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, attended Catholic schools and the University of California at Santa Barbara. My working life has been shaped by a combination of Sociology and a technical support background, from the telephone industry to information technology.
A cohouser since 2001, I learned about NVC through my neighbors and Bay Area Nonviolent Communication (BayNVC) as we soon discovered that our hopes and good intentions weren’t quite enough to help us live well together in our community! NVC has helped us so much to know and care for ourselves and each other, work with conflict, appreciate each other, and do our best to create a community that works for everyone as much as we possibly can.
Through NVC classes I came to know Miki, volunteered with other NVC teachers at a local prison, and worked as an administrative assistant for BayNVC, which eventually led me to NGL.
I am part of the Events Team – motivated to create and sustain, along with my team mates, a group of us who can collectively support each other and NGL events happening in the world.
Tricia Armstrong
Tricia (she/they) is a lifelong learner, passionate about practising and spreading ways of surrounding the patriarchal field with love so that the ways of human being and doing that do not support Life can transform.
Experience in different fields – educational, political, psychological, and religious/spiritual – led to discovering NVC and NGL.
Within NGL Online she/they serve as a storehouse, on a leader support team and on the Information Flow Maintenance Crew (IFMC).
yanae yang
Growing up in China, migrated to Hong Kong in 2008, I experienced a long term of confusion about what life I want to pursue. I wanted to be successful but knew the common achievement was not satisfying.
I came across nonviolent communication in 2016, and then joined International Intensive Training in Bali, and was touched about the intention for social change and a world that works for all.
In 2018, I came across Miki’s NVC workshop which was so different to any other ones on youtube, and then I learned about the Nonviolent Global Liberation she founded with other colleagues. I gradually realised this is a place where all NVC intentions can be put into practical manifestation. Then I quitted my job as a research assistant in the area of surgical nutrition.
Now, my focus in NGL is around welcoming new people, power and privilege tracking apprentices, and also being part of the mycelium web, moving toward to live in a physical NGL community within a pod.
yanae yang
Growing up in China, migrated to Hong Kong in 2008, I experienced a long term of confusion about what life I want to pursue. I wanted to be successful but knew the common achievement was not satisfying.
I came across nonviolent communication in 2016, and then joined International Intensive Training in Bali, and was touched about the intention for social change and a world that works for all.
In 2018, I came across Miki’s NVC workshop which was so different to any other ones on youtube, and then I learned about the Nonviolent Global Liberation she founded with other colleagues. I gradually realised this is a place where all NVC intentions can be put into practical manifestation. Then I quitted my job as a research assistant in the area of surgical nutrition.
Now, my focus in NGL is around welcoming new people, power and privilege tracking apprentices, and also being part of the mycelium web, moving toward to live in a physical NGL community within a pod.
Fox
Originally from Ireland, Fox began untethering from normative society as he explored alterative schooling systems, spending some time at A.S. Neill’s Summerhill in England and founding Ireland’s first democratic school based on the Sudbury model.
Fox’s untethering deepened through his housing activism in Dublin as a member of its squatting community. It was through his interest in the Sudbury model that he first came to appreciate the potential human systems. In NGL he found an intoxicating mix of a commitment to nonviolence and experimenting with human systems and he is committed to realising their potential within the context of a land-based NGL community.
These days he is increasingly seeing his life as an ongoing series of experiments with truth. Currently his experiments are focusing on recovering from male-training and the practice of impact sharing.
He enjoys reading fiction that supports readers to explore visionary possibilities. His favourite book is ‘Parable of the Sower’ by Octavia E. Butler.
Fox firmly believes that in order to transform the current state of the planet we need to experiment with moving beyond the traditional patriarchal unit of the nuclear family and form affinity groups based on shared purpose and a commitment to each other’s and collective liberation. To this end he is currently vagabonding with his podling mate Sabrina and exploring pod forming with another NGL member.
Within NGL he does miscellaneous tasks including the internal community newsletter, holding one of NGL’s financial storehouses and collaborating with others on the Human Capacity team to create within capacity pathways for people to land in NGL and step into more co-holding of its visionary purpose.