COMMUNITY DEATH EDUCATORS COURSE

LINKS TO SIGN UP ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE

What is the Community Death Educators Course?

12 Week Intensive

• 2 sessions per week on Zoom for 12 weeks (4 hours per week + personal preparation time)
• Culminating in an in-person 2 day workshop in North Wales (16 hours in person contact time)

The Vision

Project Community DOT: Death-Awareness Offers Transformation or Death is Our Teacher

A map, a global map and your local map, covered in DOTs. These DOTs are grassroots community champions of death-awareness; they are folks who care about having the important conversations and challenging taboos about death and dying.

The Community Death Educators course is an advanced trainer’s course for those who would hold workshops in community settings where local folk would come and engage with vital topics and experience the positive benefits of being in a death-aware community setting.

Community DOTs are people who attend these workshops regularly and self-identify as a champion for the dying, dead and bereaved.

The Seeds we are Sowing…

• It’s OK to talk about Death (Challenging Taboo)
• Death is not (just) a medical event (Broadening Ideas about Death)
• The importance of planning for End of Life (Preparing Well for Death)
• It is OK to cry and grieve (Emotional Intelligence)
• It is better to grieve together (Community Cohesion through Shared Mourning)
• Listen without “Fixing” (Empathy and Improved Communication)
• You do not need an expensive funeral, make it meaningful (Tackling Funeral Poverty)

The Benefits of Community Death-Awareness

Open, compassionate and honest conversations about Death at a grassroots community level reduce the fear of death, challenge the stigmas about talking about death and dying openly and provides safe spaces for those who need to talk, explore and learn more about death and dying to do so.

Some of the Positive Outcomes of this include:

Calm: Reduced Fear and Anxiety about Death

Connected: Reduced Social Isolation

Clarity: Improved Mental and Emotional Health

Communication: Improved Emotional Literacy

Compassion: Improved inter-community and inter-generational engagement

Cohesive: Stronger, more cohesive community response to death and dying 

What’s in it for the Community Death Educator?

This is an incredible opportunity to become a focaliser of death awareness in (your) local communities; the 12 workshop session plans offered in the Community Death Educators course can be offered as stand alone sessions or as a 12 weekly or 12 monthly series. You can choose to do this work voluntarily if you are resourced to do so but you can also seek sponsorship, grant funding or charge for these sessions as appropriate.

Now, more than ever, the need for a joined up, cohesive, grassroots community response to the needs of the dying and bereaved is strong. As systems of health and social care are at breaking point we need to rally those who feel called to come forward and join the movement to nurture and encourage community-led care of the dying and the bereaved.

We are well positioned, as Community Death Educators to offer a response to the questions posed by dwindling resources and available support from our systems of care; this is an exciting and interesting time to be knowledgeable and informed about the problems faced by communities and people dying in community; and to provide ideas and solutions.

How is the Community Death Educators course structured?

You get access to downloadable online materials which are also available in a hard-copy workbook. These materials include 12 pre-planned structured sessions for delivery in local communities. Alongside the session material we also have 12 soft-skills worksheets for you to map and assess your own skills and experience, identifying your strengths and making plans for addressing your edges for growth.

We will run the course over 12 weeks, with 2 sessions per week on Zoom. It is certainly a commitment and it is fair to call it an “intensive” but we also feel it will create a container for deep personal growth and transformation. In the first of the two sessions in the week we will encounter the material for the community workshop and explore it ourselves. In the second of the two sessions we will explore the skillset required by that workshop.

At the end of the 12 weeks we will gather in North Wales (accommodation may be an additional cost, more details to follow) for a 2 day in-person experience to consolidate and integrate all that we have covered.

Who is this Death Educators Course for?

1. Death Doulas and Soul Midwives who feel the call to work at the Grassroots
2. Community-based professionals who want to deepen their work
3. Experienced community activists who see the need for improved death-awareness and literacy in their local area

Key Qualities of a Community Death Educator

The following requires your honest assessment of your own capacity to do this work; these qualities will be drawn out, honed and anchored through the Community Death Educators course but if you don’t have these personal attributes at least in seed-form within you, then you will find this work more challenging.

Community Death Educators are:

• Compassionate
• Open-minded
• Fair-spirited
• Emotionally Intelligent
• Resilient
• Activists for Social Justice
• Self responsible
• Easy-going and fun
• Grounded and mature

The Workshops and their Skillsets

If the workshops are “particles” what are the “waves”? The skills and competancies that weave through them all are layered, the first layer is to consider what skills and competancies we would be strengthening at the grassroots among the participants. A Community Death Educator will need to embody these themselves so they form our foundational wave:

1. Talking openly about Death
2. Deep listening skills
3. Starts conversations with others about Death
4. Knows their own wishes for End of Life and funerals
5. Encourages others to share their end of life / funeral wishes
6. Champions the importance of LPA / living will
7. Champions good funerals and living wakes
8. Knowledgeable about funeral poverty and rights
9. Engages in Community Story-sharing
10. Engages in Vigil in times of need
11. Attends death cafes and grief circles
12. Connects with other DOTs

The next wave of development for our Community Death Educators are the skills and competencies required to cultivate and strengthen the above qualities in members of our communities:

1. Group Facilitation 1 Holding an Open Group
2. Art of Communal Ritual 1 Power of Symbolism
3. Safeguarding and Risk Assessments
4. Knowledge of Options and Local Services
5. Group Facilitation 2 Exploratory Discussion
6. Art of Communal Ritual 2 Holding Safe Space / Cultural Competency
7. Publicity, Planning and Feedback / Monitoring outcomes
8. Group Facilitation 3 Time, Needs and “Control”
9. Self Care, boundaries, responsibility and limits
10. Contracting and Group Agreements
11. Group Facilitation 4 Meeting dissent, conflict and discriminatory behaviour
12. Nurturing agency and ownership / finding your own voice, way and expression

Then woven into this competency framework are the 12 workshops and death café sessions:

An Open Space event for example a Death Café or other form of public event PLUS

1. Information Session on Advance Planning / End of Life Planning / LPAs
2. Information Session on Funerals and Funeral Poverty
3. Information Session on Tending to the Dead
4. Remembrance Session with Elders and Youth / Intergenerational Story Sharing
5. Remembrance Session on Local History and Ancestry
6. Remembrance Session on Ancestors and the Near Distance Dead
7. Activity Session using Crafts for Memorialisation
8. Activity Session on Making Vigils
9. Activity Session Nature Walk and Cairn Building
10. Skills Session Deep Listening for the Dying and the Bereaved
11. Skills Session Somatic Awareness
12. Skills Session Self Care

What is included in the Course Materials?

Resources for your Community Work:

• Open Space (eg Death café) guidance and plan
• 12 Workshop Plans that can be adapted for your own communities
• Worksheet resources for community participants (for photocopying)
• Dot to Dot passport
• Group agreement template

Resources for your Development during the course:

• Core competency framework
• Worksheets and journal prompts for each of the 12 Course Sessions
• Practical skills exercises and reflection journal
• Ceremony diagram and planning guidance

Resources to help you get funding and promote:

• Sample posters and social media templates
• Business Plan template
• What is a DOT? Content

Resources of Policy and Procedure:

• Risk Assessment templates and forms
• Policy guidance on Safeguarding, GDPR and Diversity / Inclusion
• Statement on Self Killing
• Feedback forms
• Complaints Procedure

Resources for upholding Standards:

• Ethics and standards with self assessment tools
• Self Care checklists

Resources to support you to network locally:

• Checklist of local service providers to contact
• Referrals and Resources list
• Information for obtaining insurance

Timeline and Costs:

The Inaugural Course will run June, July and August 2025 online with an in-person gathering in North Wales on 6^th and 7^th September.

Mondays 10am - 12noon UK time June 2nd / 9th / 16th / 23rd

Thursdays 7pm - 9pm UK time June 5th / 12th / 19th / 26th

Week Break

Mondays 10am - 12noon July 7th / 14th / 21st / 28th

Thursdays 7pm - 9pm UK time July 10th / 17th / 24th / 31st

Week Break

Mondays 10am - 12noon UK time Aug 11th / 18th / 25th and Sept 1st

Thursdays 7pm - 9pm UK time Aug 14th / 21st / 28th and Sept 4th

Attendance at these sessions is not optional, if you have to miss one session you can catch up with the recording. We cannot, in clear conscience, sign you off as having completed the course if you miss any more than 4 out of the 24 sessions, you will be offered a chance to repeat the course next year.

The Venue for the Gathering is the Barn at Ffarm Moelyci. Moelyci is radical and inspirational place run by a consortium of social enterprises. The Barn is the perfect venue for this gathering. 

We will provide basic vegan soups and salads for lunch to which we invite you to add a bring-and-share contribution. 

Overnight accommodation is not included but widely available locally from campsites, airbnbs to luxury hotels! We will be able to advise on the best local accommodation for your needs and connect you with other participants to share if you wish. We recommend travelling at least a day early to arrive fresh on the day, we will gather at 9am for a 9.30am start and work until 6pm both days, with a long lunch break to enjoy a shared feast and take time to walk and rest. 

The cost for the COURSE is:

£950 for those who are funded by their company, organisation or by grants

and £750 for those who are self funding out of their personal monies (taken on trust this is the case)

Payment plans are available but the full cost of the course must be paid before the In-person gathering in September, a £250 deposit or payment in full + a clear commitment to pay the balance secures your place.

The Course Materials and Workbook will be Live and Published by end of March 2025

There are 20 places available on the Pilot Course (the price for which is lower than it will be in time) so if you feel called then it is in your interest to sign up soon to secure your place and to benefit from the reduced price; if you are able to pay in full we welcome this as cash flow supports our business costs and the sustainability of the social enterprise

If you have any questions or thoughts please let us know at sacredcirclecic at gmail.com