Vision/Mission/Aim

Nonviolent Communication (NVC) helps us stay connected with what is alive in ourselves and others moment-to-moment, and enhances our ability to make life more wonderful for ourselves and others.

Vision:The Center for Nonviolent Communication (CNVC) is a global organization whose vision is a world where all people are getting their needs met and resolving their conflicts peacefully. In this vision, people are using Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to create and participate in networks of worldwide life-serving systems in economics, education, justice, healthcare, and peace-keeping.

Mission:Our mission is to contribute to this vision by facilitating the creation of life-serving systems within ourselves, interpersonally, and within organizations. We do this by living and teaching Nonviolent Communication.

Aim:CNVC’s aim is to provide ideas, experience, and support for the living of Nonviolent Communication in community. This is accomplished by providing Nonviolent Communication training, materials, organizational consulting, and projects that develop harmonious and effective relationships.

Brief History

Growing up in an inner–city Detroit neighborhood Marshall Rosenberg was confronted daily with various forms of violence. Wanting to learn what he could about the causes of violence and what could be done to reduce violence he chose to study clinical psychology and received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Wisconsin. In addition to his studies in Clinical Psychology, he also studied comparative religions, the lives of peacemakers throughout history, and other research to identify what human learning contributes to violence and what human learning contributes to compassionate giving and receiving. From his research, he identified thinking, language, communication skills and means of influence that reduced violence and supported compassionate relationships. He integrated what he learned into a process he named Nonviolent Communication.

Offering Nonviolent Communication to others and seeing how it empowered people to create change nonviolently and its to contribute to compassionate ways of living, he founded the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Marshall and members of the Center for Nonviolent Communication organized and trained teams of people in the following countries to apply Nonviolent Communication where it can best support compassionate ways of resolving conflicts and fulfilling the needs of all.

The Center for Nonviolent Communication now has more than 200 people certified to offer the training in these countries. In addition to people developing the process with the help of certified trainers, thousands of people around the world receive it from friends and family members whose lives have been enriched by it fulfilling the adage, “Each one teach one.”