What is a community of practice?
A community of practice is made up a group of restorative practitioners who would like to develop their practice together.

Reasons for a community of practice.  
The community of practice provides practitioners with the opportunity to:

• share experiences, successes, challenges and learnings
• share opportunities for workshops and trainings
• develop good practices through a deeper understanding of the restorative framework and its application to relationships within faith communities

How do communities of practice work?
Communities can form regionally or denominationally. They can be as small as two people and as large as the community wishes. If the group becomes too large to work effectively, two or more groups may wish to form.

Individual communities of practice decide:

• How they wish to meet, e.g., monthly or bi-monthly face-to-face gatherings, by Skype or conference call
• Who will be the group’s contact person
• Who facilitates the group: Is it always the same person? Does the group take turns? Is the contact person also the group facilitator?
• The group’s agenda: how they want to support one another, e.g., exchange practice stories, review elements of the training, develop resources, develop events, provide support for facilitating conferences

How can I join a group? 
Those who have received FaithCARE training can:

• connect directly with each other
• be connected through FaithCARE. FaithCARE will have a list of the names of group contact people and where the groups meet.

FaithCARE support for communities of practice
FaithCARE will support the communities of practice by:

• providing the names of those in the geographical area or denominational group who have indicted they ate interested in being part of a group
• providing advice if requested around particular topics or areas of practice
• provide support for facilitated conferences
• provide workshops and training

FaithCARE asks each community of practice to provide:

• anything about the group it would like potential newcomers to know
• meeting format, e.g., face-to-face, conference call, Skype
• how often the group meets
• the nature of the group, e.g., Is it a regional group or a denominational group?
• the name and contact information for the community’s contact person