What is Grounded Action?
Mobilizing quickly to support communities in need. Responding to local crises or national crises we see an arising human need and rapidly respond with skillful programs and trainings. We give people a way to take action to help in a crisis. Ultimately we believe people can move forward together, even in difficult times. At each event or training we offer, people have felt compassionate support, new skills, and awe at the connections made across challenging times. Grounded action is wise action that sees all human life as sacred.
Communities and movements are stymied when people are in conflict and don’t have the skills to resolve tensions. As our country has become more polarized and reactive, organizations have gotten more tangled in conflict. CGA’s approach resolves this issue.
Imagine what’s possible when each person is able to operate and interact from a centered place of self-leadership, with the skills to understand other’s needs, and the ability to manage conflicts with respect and compassion.
Listen to a Podcast interview with CGA founder Jen Wofford: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/idgrevolution/episodes/Episode-11-Jen-Wofford-on-Outer-and-Inner-Change-e30lg41
Grounded Action is skillful action that understands how people interact and how to inspire change. We can each take Grounded Action when we are first grounded and centered in skills. Grounded action is action that understands systems and people with a broad vision, holds complexity, and operates from your center so that you can advance the goals of your organization and movement. At a time when politics are so polarized and the stakes are so high, CGA offers organizers and organizations a pathway to resilience, sound judgment, and grounded action.
How CGA works:
We step forward, we see new possibilities, we know how to make things happen, and we act skillfully. We bring people together – to move forward together. Even when things are tense, when reactive heat rises, we take the risk to step forward, creating a new way of coming together, across divisions. And we offer training in a model that works, a model we call Grounded Resilience.
Our track record: We have brought thousands of people together, creating effective action, and enabling strong organization even in the face of crises when people feel stuck and overwhelmed. We take seriously the gift of being able to make things happen, and knowing when the world needs us to step forward.
The Center for Grounded Action has taken four profound models from the best of psychotherapy and neuroscience and boiled it down to four simple steps – two steps that enable people to manage their own inner reactivity, and two steps that move disagreements to constructive dialogue. These four steps are the basis for the Grounded Resilience model, which can move your community forward.
If you want to support our work to provide guidance and a framework for effective, skillful action for people and groups who are mobilizing right now to defend Democracy, decency, compassion and civility, we welcome your crucial support.
We offer you skills to manage difficult situations, understand yourself and others, manage teams, improve your relationships and work dynamics, and interact more skillfully and with greater ease. The Center for Grounded Action brings healing, awareness, and resilience from the center out across three layers – healing people’s internal parts, interpersonal relationships, and community and organizational ecosystems.
Our Call to Action
JOIN US in creating a world where people are more skillful in relationships, and where communities come together across painful divisions to model the peace we all want to see.
Join us and help us in advancing the Center for Grounded Action's work:
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Let's bring the Grounded Resilience model to 100 organizations
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Join us to hold 50 community dialogues for groups where people are in pain and conflict
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Help us offer the framework to Regroup, Respond and Rebuild with 50 groups to organize
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Let's deepen organizational capacity, strengthen teams, and expand community engagement
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If you know a group or community that could benefit from this work, please introduce us.
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If you’d like to join a training, create events that unite, engage in dialogues across divisions, we’d be grateful to work with you.
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If you can help us raise funds to hire staff, or you can help set up training, and organize more work, we’d welcome your support.
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Your support will empower the organizations we care most about to be more effective and whole, and allow the changes they make in the world to be that much greater; to amplify their impact. Imagine the ripple effect, like a butterfly changing the tides around the world. 100 organizations capable of operating at this level could help us reach the tipping point, and effect the change we all want to see.
All contributions are put directly to good use. If you value the work we’ve been doing since March to provide Free Resilience workshops for federal workers who've lost jobs and careers in the cuts to programs, we need you. If you can support the work we began October 2023 to create spaces for healing and understanding that united Jews, Muslims, Christians across the Israel-Palestine divisions, and to bring people who hold different views together, valuing all human life, we welcome your support. We are honored to announce receipt of a grant from the Brookline Community Foundation. If you want to provide support for us to bring the Grounded Resilience model to communities in pain and conflict, please support our work today!
Tax deductible donations are welcome. CGA is a 501(c)3 charitable organization approved by the IRS. Please help us fund the work we do, on the links provided here, or by check payable to, mailed to: Center for Grounded Action, 7 Harvard Avenue, Brookline, MA 02446. With deep gratitude!
What Sets Us Apart
CGA integrates skills from the fields of psychotherapy, consulting, and somatics in the actions we take.
With mind, body, heart, soul and community aligned, people can skillfully create unity, healing and change in a time of division and reactivity. CGA supports organizers and everyday people who work to make our world a better place, in support of a more just, equitable, and sustainable community. We bring specific, learnable skills that increase relational intelligence and resilience, and empower people and groups working for progressive change. CGA gives people the skills perhaps most needed at this critical moment – skills that they integrate and use throughout their lives – to help the people and movements we care about bring forth the changes we envision for the world.
“What could our world be like if we all had the skills to interact with each other with respect, understanding, and wise action? Imagine with us what can be possible when people have the skillful training to communicate clearly, address conflicts in a healthy way, and strengthen teams and organizations? Welcome to the Center for Grounded Action. We are honored to work with you.”
Jen Wofford, founder and president
Board of Directors
Toby Chaudhuri
Toby is a communications expert in progressive politics, an entrepreneurial leader in social innovation designs, who skillfully brings people together.
DaLinda Fermin
Dalinda Fermin, is a veteran Labor Organizer, Campaigner and currently the Director of SEIU’s Organizing Capacity Program.
Jen Wofford
Jen Wofford brings unique skills and training as an organizer for social justice, a skilled therapist for couples and adults, and an organizational consultant, strengthening and healing people, relationships, groups and communities.
Maybe you?
Our board is ready to grow
Are you ready to help?
CGA Advisors
Francis Calpotura
Francis Calpotura is a movement leader, the Founder and Director of TIGRA and the past Founder and Co-Director of the Center for Third World Organizing.
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Lew Finfer
Lew Finfer has been a community organizer since 1970. The Boston Globe called Lew “a quiet leader who spent the past four decades orchestrating some of Boston’s biggest campaigns for social and economic justice.”
Rabbi David Jaffe
David Jaffe is a writer and Rabbi whose life work seeks to integrate spiritual wisdom, social justice, reconciliation and deep personal growth.
Lane Windham
Lane Windham is a labor historian and former union organizer who is based at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.