Metta Knowledge For Peace, LLC

consulting

MettaKnowledge for Peace is concerned with the health and well being of those who work to serve and protect those in need. Our services adapt the burgeoning Employee Assistance model in the United States to smaller organizations with more limited budgets. Working with each organization to develop a package of organizational assessments and therapy, trainings and ongoing access for employees to professional mentoring, we provide concrete and constructive ways to expand the capacity of individuals and organizations to cope with the stresses of working in such arenas.

Those of us who work in fields where we deal with the causes and effects of violence on a daily basis often do so because we care deeply about others’ well being. We wish to act with compassion and kindness and to have a positive impact. However, the realities of facing the effects of war, sexual and domestic violence, genocide, racism, and myriad personal and collective traumas can wear away our reserves and our faith in humanity and the world. We may find ourselves frustrated, numbed out, burned out, angry, grief-stricken, or worn down. The insistent question of “Why?” in the face of so much suffering seems to remain unanswered.

Further, the pain in the populations we serve may be mirrored in our own lives and organizations as a whole. Many professionals working on the front lines of violence may know very little about Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and about the cultural, sociological, neurological, and psychological causes and effects of violence. In groups working with problems of violence and poverty, often compassion for the pain and suffering of the people served is put above compassion for oneself. Self-care is seen as secondary to caring for others, at best, and a search for self-knowledge is seen as selfish.

Our approaches are drawn from many spiritual teachings and practices from around the world evoking the human capacities of kindness and compassion to cultivate an open-hearted fearlessness in the face of pain. We combine this with the wealth of knowledge from the western sciences about the causes and effects of violence. The combination of metta (kindness) plus knowledge can be radically transformative and can dramatically shift an organization’s capacity to function in the face of enormous stresses.

Resources

• Program Development

  MettaKnowledge for Peace works with organizations to develop programs for public education and staff training in the areas of learning about how and why violence happens, what its effects are on individuals and communities, and how to ameliorate them.  Areas of special expertise are in working with issues of interracial tensions and compassion fatigue.

• Organizational Therapy

  MettaKnowledge for Peace works with employees and management in a variety of different ways to support and maintain and improve staff morale, creativity, commitment, and well being. Methods used include focus groups, professional mentoring, and trainings to foster a deeper understanding of the effects and causes of violence and how to meet pain with an open-hearted fearlessness.

• Employee Assistance

  MettaKnowledge for Peace provides one-one-one professional mentoring to employees both on and off site depending upon the needs of your organization. Areas of exploration and support include professional development and growth, organizational therapy, and deepening the skills of compassion in the face of working with the causes and effects of violence. 

• Deepening the Skills of Insight and Compassion: Presentations and Trainings for Professionals

  MettaKnowledge for Peace brings dynamic new approaches based on principles from a variety of spiritual disciplines and western understandings of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and the causes and effects of violence to help professionals cope with the stresses of working in fields where such challenges are an everyday reality.