Purpose
To design meetings, workshops, and events not only as spaces for sharing information or making decisions, but also as environments where people can feel safe, heard, supported, and connected.
What Need Does It Address?
- Creating more inclusive meetings and events
- Making relational and emotional labor visible
- Strengthening trust among participants
- Sharing responsibility for care
- Developing alternatives to performance-driven work cultures
Practices for Care-Centered Facilitation
When facilitating, you can:
- Remember that a meeting is not only a space for producing outcomes, but also for building relationships.
- Support trust, participation, and connection rather than focusing solely on performance.
- Avoid expecting people to leave their caregiving responsibilities, children, health conditions, hormones, grief, or everyday realities at the door.
- Create spaces where disagreement and conflict can be discussed safely and constructively.
- Recognize that silence can also be a form of participation.
- Remember that not everything needs to be documented; decide together what should be recorded.
- Share invisible relational tasks across the group, such as welcoming participants, taking notes, keeping time, including newcomers, and noticing people’s needs.
- View care as a shared responsibility rather than the sole responsibility of the facilitator.
- Normalize taking breaks, leaving early, stepping away, or going offline when needed.
- Reflect not only on outcomes at the end of a meeting, but also on how care was experienced throughout the process.
- Tidy the space together after the meeting or event, remembering that care continues after the formal program ends.
- When expressing gratitude, acknowledge not only visible achievements but also invisible care work.
- Recognize life-sustaining actions as valuable contributions: asking for help, setting boundaries, taking breaks, making space for others, and resting are all part of collective work.
Things to Consider
- Care does not mean trying to make everyone happy.
- It seeks to address conflicts safely rather than suppress them.
- People participate in different ways and have different care needs.
- Care work should not fall on one person alone; it should be shared as much as possible across the group.
The İhtimam Perspective
İhtimam Rituals offer practical ways to strengthen care relationships in everyday life. However, lasting solutions to the invisibility of care also require changes in institutions, policies, and systems.
For more structural approaches, explore the Care Policy Recommendation Tool:
You can also use the Care Mapping Template and the Digital Care Mapping Tool developed by İhtimam Association to better understand and visualize care relationships.
Shared By
This ritual was contributed by İhtimam’s Co-Nurturers.
İhtimam Rituals are a living collection of care practices developed by individuals, communities, and organizations in everyday life. You can contribute to this collective archive by sharing a ritual that strengthens care relationships in your own daily life.