Nonviolent Communication for Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (NVC4BIPOC)
Date: Sundays, September 13 & 20, and October 4, 11, 18 & 25, 2026 (6 sessions)
Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Pacific
Location: Online Zoom
Fee: $350 CAD
Registration closes September 12, 2026.
If cost is a barrier, get in touch and we can look at payment options and pricing that supports your sustainability and mine.
A six-week Nonviolent Communication series created to centre the lived experience of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour.
We live within systems — capitalism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and other forms of oppression — that can leave us disconnected from our own reality and from our full humanity. For Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, the impact of these systems is often carried across generations, showing up at work, at home, and in our relationships with other racialised communities.
This six-week series offers a foundation in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) built specifically to hold and centre BIPOC experience. Together we will build the foundational skills of NVC — observation, feelings, needs, and requests — while creating space for embodied practice: movement, rest, and reconnection to what is real and meaningful.
Using your own examples and real-life situations, you will practice tools to support self-connection and self-compassion, and to communicate with clarity even in moments shaped by harm or misunderstanding. This is a space to explore what nonviolence means for you, and how it can support your relationship to yourself, to others, and to your community.
This offering is highly experiential and is held as a confidential, affirming space for BIPOC folks to learn, practice, and connect.
In this workshop, you’ll explore:
The foundational building blocks of NVC: observations, feelings, needs, and requests
Embodied practices — movement, rest, and reconnection — to stay grounded in what’s real
The generational and lived impact of racism and oppression on our sense of self
Tools for self-connection and self-compassion in the face of harm
Practical application to conversations at work, in family, and across community
Connection with a community of other BIPOC NVC practitioners
About Leonie Smith
Leonie Smith is a first-generation Canadian of Jamaican heritage, and the founder of The Thoughtful Workplace, People of Colour for Nonviolent Communication (POC4NVC), and the Necessary Trouble Collective (NTC). She has more than 20 years of experience in senior leadership roles in nonprofit organisations, spanning communications, fundraising, and human resources, and is a certified trainer in Nonviolent Communication.
My approach to NVC is anchored in a commitment to support people — especially those from traditionally and historically marginalised groups — to show up in their full humanity in the places they live, work, and play. This is core to why I created this space: to hold NVC in a way that centres and honours the experience of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour.