This thread is to collect a vaste range of elements that may be helpful to share, with the idea to inform how we can work together in the International Department (thread).
I’d like to invite all Language Circles delegates and leaders, both from more mature and young LCs, to contribute with their perspective on the following questions:
What are we good at as a Language Circle?
What could we improve as a Language Circle?
Hello everybody. I write this comment being the leader (coordinator) of the SoFA Romania from the SoFA International Environment. Some of the ideas are generally related to languages circles and some are specific to our SoFA Romania circle:
What are we good at as a Language Circle?
Resources:
Localized sociocracy knowledge (Glossary, Articles, Posts, Trainings); local human resources to be explored; local connections that already exist or that could be made.
Skills:
Communicate with people in their native language, teach sociocracy in native language, implement sociocracy using a native language (other than English), using English as our “lingua franca” to share experiences and good practices inside SoFA International Environment
Offerings:
Share sociocracy in a native language; teach sociocracy in a native language; implement sociocracy in a native language; invite people to sustain the spreading of sociocracy in a native language; develop a local sociocracy related community
Strategies:
Invite people to communities of practice in native language; invite people to join SoFA as supporting members; identify people who resonate with SoFA vision, mission and aims eager to spread sociocracy and become working members; develop a specific language related circle structure; make allies in local languages; work asynchronously as much as possible; meetings to exchange experiences and good practices and to inspire each other; Social Media presence and activity; sustaining each other on social media Sociocrație în România | LinkedIn.
What could we improve as a Language Circle?
Needs:
SoFA web official presence in Romanian; landing page for SoFA Romania www.sociocracyforall.org/ro (URL proposal); pages for SoFA articles in Romanian; CoP-RO - Community of Practice for Romanian registration page; SoFA Zoom Room for sociocracy related meetings; Sociocracy Certified Trainer for Romanian, Sociocracy Certified Consultant for Romanian. We recently have a SoFa Discussion Forum Section available for Romanian (Thank you!)
Desires:
Spreading sociocracy in Romanian for Romanians wherever they are; become sociocracy ambassadors and international networking.
Tensions:
We are pro communication, pro mutual understanding and pro cooperation. Thank you!
@adrian.zarif I really like your contributions and the clean way you presented them! Maybe that’s a format that all LCs could follow for clarity.
Inviting @nora.plaza @david.cebrian_tarras @roberto.bonino @lucia.levato @sanket.bihari @pia.rohn to contribute 
@pia.rohn I’ve got two requests: could you pass this along to the Seeding LCs you think may be interested to contribute? And could you help Sara creating a Forum account, please?
SozFA:
What are we good at as a Language Circle?
What could we improve as a Language Circle?
On Sociocrazia Italia
We have a big diversity of members in terms of skills and interests. For example, we have members working in the public sector, for profits, non profits, social movements; people worked with meditation, startups, nonviolent resistance, dragon dreaming.
We’ve got nearly two people with trainer certification (Pierre and Thomas) and quite a few want to start the certification process.
Pierre is well know in Italy as a sociocracy pioneer. We have new leaders emerging, such as Sara
Molte Voci Una Canzone (MVOS in Italian) was just published by a well know publisher in self-management.
We have a good number of people interested (contacts from Pierre’s work in the past) and a 700 members Facebook group.
We need to have a better strategy and structure in order to orient our work and have easy onboarding. We tried several things in the past (social media, trainings) but without much coherence. MVUC will create a wave of new people interested, so it’s key to work on a good training (and certification) pathway for people, as well as marketing and communication.
I believe that in Brazil (and I say Brazil because I never managed to do anything in Portugal) our strength comes from the community created around the theme. Sociocracia is a household name among people working with agile, future of work, design org. And we sell it as a self-management methodology.
Our biggest difficulty is creating a ‘glue’ between the people in the group, both consultants and facilitators as well as volunteers and alumni. Another difficulty is to get paying people for our courses, our audience today is made up mostly of ecovillages/NGOs/associations that are used to free events.
I think what will help us the most now is to reposition our social networks to reach other audiences
From @lucia.levato
What we do well: the meetings, supporting and listening to each other. The intention to move forward. What we could improve: strategize around the Theory of Change (ToC). Where do we stand now? How to help the mature LC reach phase 2 of the ToC.
I agree with what Thomas wrote and, on the improvement part, I would like to add that I think we should work on our marketing strategy, especially on how to promote the training cycle we have been working on.
