Minutes of the PHANA Council Teleconference, May 9,  7-9pm EST, 2005

Present:  Roddy Duchesne; Ann Norfolk; Jan Rigsby (Chair and Recorder); Cynthia Schwartzberg.

The following 3 priority agenda items were determined in advance: 

1.   Acknowledging that this will be Roddy's last teleconference. He will complete some remaining tasks over the new few weeks, and then remove himself from Council emails (a restricted group email system, PHANA-Council@topica.com).

2.  Discussion of criteria for membership regarding Stages of Commitment.

3.  Discussion of PHANA's vision, in terms of how it has changed and where we might be heading. 

 

1.  Roddy's retirement party (sans Gold Watch)

Roddy shares his appreciation that the remaining members of PHANA Council are willing to take on the manifold responsibilities that he has held over the past 5 years.  Roddy's service was more of a position of Executive Director than a committee chairperson.  He also expressed appreciation of the support that PHANA Council gave him during this time, the steadiness, holding, and containing as PHANA filled out areas of its own leadership and authority while dealing with specific cases and situations during the initial phase of creating an invitation list for our initial 2002 membership drive -- when we had to get the names of all certified Pathwork Helpers from both the training regions and from Pathwork organizations where Helpers might be working who were recognised prior to formal HTPs.

He also commended the amount and quality of work that had been accomplished primarily through email, as there was only one in-person meeting between 2000 and 2005.  "We have created a new model" he said, complimenting the clarity of communications that made this possible and the maturity that allowed us to spend a minimal amount of time on personal process and relationship issues between Council members. "We had very few blowups!" he laughed, "We claimed our stuff and separated it so that there was little intermixture" of process with business matters.

Council members expressed their deep thanks to Roddy.  His departure cannot be 'fixed' nor his position 'filled'. Council will need to grow into it's new form and adapt to a new mixture of skills, abilities and personalities.

 

2. Stages of Commitment and Constructive Confrontation

2.A  Specific discussion details

In the interests of transparency, there was an individual application that generated this discussion, and respect for their privacy requires that those details be kept in confidence. This is not the first time Council has dealt with issues regarding an individual's application.  What is being brought forward in these minutes are the policy issues that are forming based upon several such discussions. Many of the discussion items were continued in Item 3 below on PHANA's vision.

2.B  Authority Issues

It feels important to distinguish areas of PHANA's authority.

We have not been authorised to challenge the Leadership abilities or the Leadership performance of individual Helpers, only their Helpership.

We must also remain aware of and respect the elements of cultural differences between geographical regions, where conflicts regarding appropriate methods of process might arise.

Of course, these areas overlap: individual behaviour versus regional activities or areas of concerns, even expanding into International issues of training, culture, and legalities.  Yet it is important to see the overlap as exactly that, and to not enter into areas that are distinctly the responsibility and the authority of the Foundation and / or the regions.

2.C  Defining Helpership Issues

Helpership issues have been integrated into the PHANA membership application, and include:

--    Appropriate training, certification or recognition by an authorised affiliate or chapter

--    An agreement to honour and support the Stages of Commitment, especially in the areas of constructive confrontation and doing our own work, including being in supervision as required.

--    An agreement to honor and support a member Code of Conduct.

PHANA's commitment to its membership includes:

--    To strengthen and develop Helpership on an individual basis

--    To assure that public perception of Pathwork Helpership includes integrity, as in 'walking the talk' and in taking action to address activities or behavior that are not in alignment with Helpership principles. This can be a huge area of overlap, as we may only address such issues within PHANA membership.

 

3. PHANA's Vision 

3.A   Prior Mission Items

PHANA has developed a Mission and Services Statement (posted at www.phana.org) but without a vision we have remained task oriented.  Our tasks have gone well, and include:

--   Creating www.phana.org through the dedication of Roddy Duchesne

--   Creating the Pathwork Teachers Helper, through the vision and administration of Dottie Titus

--   Developing criteria for membership that includes a Code of Conduct

--   Holding a party that people actually came to: memberships created an active organization.

3.B  Individual versus Organizational Focus

As an extension from the discussion in Section 2, we delineate the purpose of PHANA and PHANA membership from other Pathwork organizations and committee as being designed to support and develop individual Helpers, rather than to support individual or separate communities or specific tasks or duties.

 3.C  Areas NOT within PHANA's Authority

 3.C.1  Helpership Training Programs / Helpership Certification.  While PHANA was encouraged several years ago to review several new HTPs, this is now covered by NAPAC.  The North American Pathwork Association Council) Specifically, NAPAC's subcommittee, HAG (Helpership Advisory Group) now carries responsibility for research into new and existing programs and reports its findings.

3.C.2  Operation as a Pathwork Group, Chapter or Region.  The International Pathwork Foundation retains authority to recognize Pathwork Groups, Chapters and Regions, or to delegate this authority to councils such as the North American Pathwork Association, the Brazilian Council, or the European Council.

3.C.3  Copyright Issues.  Regarding the use of the word 'Pathwork', the Pathwork Foundation retains all authority. However, the use of the phrase 'Pathwork Helper' does overlap into PHANA's original mandate to sustain the quality of Pathwork Helpership.  Anyone who uses this term without proper authorization may generate an exploration by PHANA based upon its knowledge base of organizational contacts and its researched database, although the Foundation has the only legal right to challenge use of the term.  A presumption here is that such use would be made out of ignorance or misunderstanding rather than a deliberate attempt to defraud the public, so that PHANA might help resolve such an issue through communication and education rather than procedurally.

 

4. International issues 

4.A  Development of an International Pathwork Helpers Association (nicknamed IPHA as a concept for now) has three distinct areas of difficulty:

4.A.1  Finances.  Processing membership payments from other countries, currency exchange differences, and how to determine what fees are appropriate based upon the living standards of an individual country. One solution to this was developed by Dottie Titus, by establishing the cost of an ordinary one pound loaf of bread as a currency exchange indicator rather than allowing international finances to do so. It is possible that such an International organization could function upon donations only, but budgets should be well thought out before considering such a financial foundation.

4.A.2  Language.  While there is precedent for choosing one language within an organization, the relatively low numbers of Helpers worldwide makes disenfranchising even a single Helper (due to lack of fluency in another language than their own) something to be avoided if at all possible. There are several elements here.

4.A.2.a  Email.  The only cost effective way to run such an organization is by email, which would require both computer access and some level of computer literacy in addition to written (versus solely verbal) language skills.

4.A.2.b  Document conversion.  Computer conversion of documents from one language to another creates errors where special characters or keystroke combinations are used for accentuation or punctuation, such as the Spanish grammatical use of an upside down exclamation mark at the beginning of an exclamatory sentence, or the use of cedillas denoting differentiation in a vowel or consonant.  This will affect emails as well as contributions into and out of the PTH database.

4.A.2.c  Translations.  In order to facilitate communication with as many Pathwork teachers as possible, it is desirable to organise authorised assistance in translating PTH documents and official IPHA communication.

4.A.3  Practicalities.  Helpership does not attract a particularly high percentage of technically skilled people, linguists, or business or organizational managers.  Helpership income does not compare well with professions which demand similarly lengthy trainings.  The focus of Helpership is individual personal process, group emotional process, and the teaching of Pathwork as a spiritual discipline.  These factors are practical, day to day issues to be considered the creation of an International organization which intends to encourage and facilitate active communication within its membership.

4.A.4  Volunteer workloads.  PHANA is having difficulties managing its efforts with North America. Before we can consider extending into other countries, a strong and dedicated volunteer force needs to be established for the tasks that already exist -- managing www.phana.org, PTH (which might be immediately affected by both submissions and requests for translations of existing documents), and the proposed Forum which would be the basis of International email communications.  Because some of these tasks might extend into part time positions, budget estimates might be severely affected by having to resort to contractors or payments.

 

4.B  Finding out what might be needed

What brought this subject up?  We currently have 2 PHANA members who live outside of North America, and several members who teach outside of North America (remembering that because of language barriers, PHANA does not include Mexico at this point).  Many Helpers working Internationally were trained by North American Pathwork centers. PHANA membership seems to have value.

We may need to experiment a bit in order to discover the extent of the needs, desires, and support that Pathwork Helpers worldwide might wish to receive as well as contribute to.  It is also possible that North America contains the majority of independently operating Helpers, and that Helpers in other countries might not need the equivalent of PHANA at this point.  However, in accepting even a few International members PHANA will need to create structure similar to what an IPHA version might require.

We might also consider a general poll of our existing membership, and perhaps request information from those who have chosen not to join, in order to discover what works, what doesn't, and what is still needed.