building cultures of care
Sonderworx offers hard and soft skills training to passionate community responders so they can better reach people in need while simultaneously building their own resilience, emotional intelligence and wellbeing, enabling them to continue doing the work that matters most to them and the communities they serve.
How do we achieve this?
Our signature H.U.M.A.N.S approach goes beyond traditional training methods, it integrates the latest developments in neurobiology, immersive learning techniques, and scientifically-backed de-escalation strategies, to resolve volatile situations, protect the responder, and care for the public.
Expected Results
After our class, students will be able to:
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Ensure safety: Stay safe and avoid career and life-changing injuries.
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Trauma-informed response: Provide holistic and trauma-informed responses to volatile situations.
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Improve Assistance Skills: Utilize hard and soft skills to effectively assist and 'reach' people in need.
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Promote Equity and Inclusion: Build cultural humility and bias awareness to actively promote equity and inclusion.
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Build emotional intelligence (EQ): EQ is linked to fewer cases of excessive force and improved relationships within the community.
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Prevent Burnout: Apply skills to regulate your nervous system and co-regulate others during stressful situations to build resilience, prevent burnout and promote wellness.
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Stress Regulation: Develop skills to bounce back from mental and emotional challenges faced on the job so that they can show up as a whole person in their personal and professional lives.
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Effective Communication: Develop skills and confidence to engage in open and honest conversations around challenging topics with clients and colleagues.
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Teamwork and Collaboration: Improve teamwork, collaborative problem-solving, and foster coworker camaraderie.
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Operate well in VUCA Environments: Utilize skills and strategies to effectively operate in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments.
Our Team.
Our multi-disciplinary team of experts help responders cultivate a deeper understanding of human behavior and its application in public service in order to honor the humanity of both clients and service providers.
Belinda Hoole
Founder & President
Sheherezade Jafari PhD
Communications & DBI Lead.
Juli Hendren
Experiential Training Lead
Joe Cassa
Law Enforcement Lead
Dr. George Thompson MD
Neuroscience Lead
SonderWorx Troupe
Scenario Training Leads
Our Solutions
Community responders move toward uncertainty or danger to protect and save lives, much like firefighters running into burning buildings. For responders to handle emotionally intense situations, they must be mentally prepared. How do we prepare them for this demanding work? By combining embodied neuroscience and immersive learning methodologies, we enhance their professional capabilities and ensure their well-being and longevity in the field.
Our signature H.U.M.A.N.S training approach equips responders with skills to develop emotional intelligence, resilience, and well-being. This training approach includes grounding and centering exercises, didactics, “hot practice” role plays, team building, and self-reflection. These activities help build the neural circuits responders need in their work.
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Our training focuses on building cultures of care where key principles enhance training, policy, and practice synergistically. Our multi-disciplinary team of experts help responders recognize their own and others’ emotional states, developing emotional self-regulation and the ability to co-regulate others' states.
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The principal goal of crisis response is to transform “a stranger in distress” into “a friend we can help.” Recognizing that those we assist are often in fight-or-flight or freeze-shutdown states, we emphasize the importance of establishing safe, trusting relationships. This foundation allows for collaborative efforts to discover new possibilities within and beyond the crisis.
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Foundations of Resilience
1-day in person class or
hybrid online / live zoom
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Hot-practice: Includes approximately 15 minutes per student of facilitated role-play with individual one-on-one feedback.
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Trauma Informed Response: Gain insight into how to provide holistic and trauma-informed responses to volatile situations.
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Resilience & Wellbeing: Understand how to build resilience to avoid burnout and bounce back from the mental and emotional consequences of what you deal with, enabling you to show up as a whole person in your personal and professional lives.
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Skills to connect with community members: Utilize the hard and soft skills taught in the class to improve your ability to assist and “reach” people in need, as feeling successful is key to your ability to continue doing the work that matters.
2
Empowerment Essentials
3-day in person class
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Hot-practice: Includes approx 50 minutes per student of facilitated role-play with individual one-on-one feedback.
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Mastery: Gain a more in-depth understanding and application of the skills taught in Foundations of Resilience.
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Safety: Stay safe and avoid career and life-changing injuries.
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Conflict Management: Understand and begin to apply conflict management techniques to identify the root causes of conflict and possibilities for resolution.
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Stress Regulation: Begin to understand your own unique autonomic profile to better manage your body's reactions in stressful situations. Develop a set of simple Somatic Activities (body exercises) you can use to calm yourself during stressful encounters.
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Customization:
All programs are customizable, and additional content can be interchanged with the content outlined above.
For example:
​Mediation: Utilize informal mediation techniques to facilitate dialogue and resolution among two or more parties.
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Mastering
Resilience
5-day in person class
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Hot-practice: Includes approx 85 minutes per student of facilitated role-play with individual one-on-one feedback.
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Mastery: Gain a more in-depth understanding and application of the skills taught in Empowerment Essentials.
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Equity and Inclusion: Build cultural humility and bias awareness to actively promote equity and inclusion. Understand how your own and other people's biases and conflict management styles affect your ability to communicate effectively.
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Burnout Prevention: Apply skills to regulate your nervous system and co-regulate others during stressful situations to build resilience, prevent burnout and promote wellness.
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Emotional intelligence (EQ): Build EQ which is linked to fewer cases of excessive force and improved relationships within the community.
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Teamwork and Collaboration: Improve teamwork, collaborative problem-solving, and foster coworker camaraderie.
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Operate well in VUCA Environments: Utilize skills and strategies to effectively operate in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environments.
Our Story
Building Cultures of Care
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sonder. n
The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passed in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.
Our Story is in our name.
Since 1989, SonderWorx has proudly served as a trusted provider of reality-based training in neuroscience-informed communication, mediation, verbal de-escalation, and mental health awareness. Spanning across diverse industries such as community response, law enforcement, healthcare, education, and city, state, and federal government, we've consistently delivered excellence.
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At SonderWorx, our immersive and engaging H.U.M.A.N.S signature approach goes beyond traditional training. It equips participants with the essential soft and hard skills, instilling the confidence needed to navigate high-pressure situations and foster positive outcomes.
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Connect with Us
We'd love to meet you and explore how we can support your team to better reach people in need while simultaneously building their own resilience. We'd like to help empower you to continue doing the work that matters most to you and the communities you serve.
