Healthy Buddhist Communities Training

Background

In 2019, Hemera Foundation launched its Healthy Buddhist Communities initiative to support sangha communities and Buddhist organizations that seek to prevent the harm caused by teacher misconduct. Hemera has also funded organizations that seek to serve the wider field of offering training and education to teachers, communities, and other leaders. As part of that work, Hemera funded An Olive Branch Associates to develop training modules to serve communities in a comprehensive way, providing training for teachers, staff, and students.  This current offering is intended to pilot this program by offering the training to three Buddhist communities. Participating organizations will receive the training free of charge in exchange for offering feedback about the experience.

Participation in a 4-Module Pilot Program

This site contains detailed information about the Training Modules, the selection criteria for organizations to participate, the expected outcomes for selected organizations, an overview of the steps in the pilot process, and an Application Form for organizations wishing to participate.

Module 1:

Setting Healthy Boundaries to Prevent Misconduct: A Training Module for Buddhist Teachers

Healthy Buddhist Communities Interest Area:  Strengthening the education and training of those in teaching and leadership roles on the topics of professional ethics, ethical use of power, and pastoral roles and responsibilities. 

Participants: Designed for clergy and lay teachers and others in leadership roles within a center. 

Content: The training focuses on three important aspects of the teaching and leadership role. 

1. The teacher’s/leader’s ethical responsibility to guide the awakening of their students with compassion while simultaneously protecting the student’s welfare. This responsibility includes safeguarding the students’ physical, psychological, spiritual, and sexual well-being. 
2. The psychological processes of transference and countertransference. These processes involve projections by the student onto the teacher such as adoration or love (transference) and unconscious projections of feelings held by the teacher back onto the student (countertransference). In spiritual counseling, as in therapeutic relationships, understanding how these processes operate and how to guard against their potentially deleterious effects is critical to maintaining healthy boundaries when spiritual guidance is being offered. 
3. The power dynamics that are always present between teacher and student and, in particular, how inappropriate use of power can generate abuse. By virtue of their position, teachers hold an elevated position with respect to their students. When teachers abuse the power of their positions through sexual advances, physical harm, and/or abusive language, they step outside of their professional role and violate ministerial ethics and fiduciary responsibilities.  The consequences of such abuse on students are psychological and spiritually damaging and leave lasting scars on students’ well-being.

This module engages spiritual leaders in candid discussion of these three components of their responsibility and how they can establish and maintain healthy boundaries with their students. Specific attention is given to: 1) how power can be abused and what happens to those students who are harmed; 2) what safeguards spiritual organizations can design into their practices to proactively guard against abusive relationships; and 3) how teachers and organizational leaders can appropriately deal with their own attractions to students or advances by students — both of which can naturally arise during intimate spiritual interactions.

Module 2:

Setting Healthy Boundaries to Prevent Misconduct: A Training Module for Community Members

Healthy Buddhist Communities Interest Area: Strengthening community education on the topics of religious abuse, healthy boundaries, and the limits of the teacher/student relationship. 

Participants: Designed for the spiritual community members rather than teachers and leaders. 

Content: Sangha members will learn about healthy boundaries in interactions with teachers and community leaders. They will also hear about how teacher-student relationships evolve and the points in this evolution at which students can become vulnerable to abuse by teachers. Additionally, the power dynamics between teachers and students will be discussed as well as what distinguishes a healthy from a predatory relationship. While this module stresses that it is the teacher’s/leader’s responsibility to maintain appropriate boundaries in their relationships, it also includes information about what students can do to protect themselves from transgression of these boundaries. Examples of ethical codes of conduct are presented and discussed as safeguards for individuals and sanghas. While the emphasis will be on empowering sangha members to prevent abuse and ensure that healthy boundaries are maintained, the module includes examples of the consequences to individuals and sanghas when abuse is not prevented.

Module 3:

Effective Ethics Programs: Best Practices for Developing and Implementing a Buddhist Organization’s Ethics Policy and Grievance Procedure

Healthy Buddhist Communities Interest Area: Creating and implementing effective policies and procedures supporting organizational transparency, whistleblower and abuse reporting, and grievance resolution and remediation.

Participants: Designed for administrative leaders, board members, ethics committee members, and spiritual leaders. 

Content: The training focuses on developing and implementing the tools that any organization must have in order to encourage and support ethical behavior on the part of its leaders and members. Organizations that have and enforce clear ethics policies and grievance procedures are rarely the ones that suffer extreme chaos when allegations of ethical misconduct surface. 

Participants in this training will learn to identify the components that make an ethics policy both comprehensive and streamlined as well as easy to understand. Examples of effective policies will be used to help each organization’s board members and leaders see how an ethics policy must have a clear definition of ethical behavior as well as a statement about to whom it applies and how it will be enforced. 

Components of a whistle-blower policy and grievance procedure are also explored. These two documents provide clarity to support the ethics policy and will be discussed from a best-practice view with examples.

In addition to sharing examples of policies and procedures, this training provides participants with the opportunity to work interactively on either revising their existing documents or creating them for the first time. Critical aspects of effective implementation strategies are also discussed.

Module 4:

Informed and Responsible Governance: Service on the Board of a Nonprofit Buddhist Organization in the United States.

Healthy Buddhist Communities Interest Area: Creating effective education and training for administrative leaders, board members, and others charged with maintaining accountable leadership and governance. 

Participants: Designed for administrative leaders, board members, ethics committee members, and spiritual leaders. 

Content: Most large mainstream Buddhist organizations in the United States are registered in their state as nonprofits and may also hold an IRS letter of determination as a 501.c.3 charitable organization. Nonprofit status in itself, however, does not ensure that the organization’s board of directors, administrative leaders, and others operate according to widely-accepted best practices for nonprofits. Information in this module is based on nonprofit governance practices in current use in the United States with attention paid to the special role of the spiritual leader and the relationship between the board of directors and clergy. 

The governance training module includes:

• Information about the nonprofit sector in the U.S. and typical governance models

• Presentation and discussion of the basic responsibilities of a nonprofit board
• Fiduciary responsibilities of the board as a group and of board members as individuals
• The board’s responsibility to establish necessary policies (such as code of ethics, conflict of interest, whistleblower, sexual harassment, grievances, etc.)
• Key bylaws provisions for selecting board members, terms of office, powers of the board and spiritual leaders, and relationship between the board and the spiritual leaders.

Discussion topics include authoritarian vs. cooperative models of governance, rubber-stamping, governance as leadership, confidentiality, mission statements, strategic planning, accountability, risk management, avoidance of hard questions, and topics of concern revealed in pre-training interviews.

Having a healthy governance system and well-communicated policies that are enforced can reduce the frequency and severity of conflicts, ethical misconduct, and other dysfunctions in organizations. Organizations with strong board governance in which board members exert independent judgment are generally more successful than those with weak, hands-off boards. 

Selection Criteria for Pilot Sites

Organizations wishing to participate in this pilot will be required to appoint an Evaluation Team – a teacher, a board member, and a community member – who will attend all four training sessions and provide evaluative feedback. This team is expected to provide suggestions for improving all aspects of the training materials and presentation.

1. The organization agrees to have all four modules piloted with their organization/community. Revised: The organization can choose specific module(s) to pilot, the time commitment is 2-3 hours per module, and the training can be completed over the next 12 months at times convenient to the organization.
2. The organization is not currently involved in a major ethics breach or conflict resolution process regarding an ethics violation.
3. There is an actively functioning board of directors that will examine the organization’s operations and assume responsibility for implementing the learning gained from the modules.
4. The organization has a residential or commuting sangha that identifies with the organization (or both).
5. The teacher(s), board of directors, ethics committee (if one exists), and members are willing to participate in the training activities.
6. The organization is willing to support the evaluation plan and contribute to improving the training.
7. Participants have the ability to access the training via Zoom.

Expected Outcomes for Participating Organizations

Through this training program, organizations are expected to develop a culture in which ethical misconduct is unlikely and, if it does occur, leaders and community members will be prepared to respond effectively.

• Teachers and community members will increase their awareness of ethical boundaries and appropriate conduct in their relationships with each other.
• Teachers will be encouraged to reflect on their professional, ethical, and fiduciary responsibilities; understand the emotional dynamics associated with transference and countertransference in the teacher-student relationship; understand the predictable impact of boundary violations on individuals and on the community as a whole; and identify steps they can take to get help and supervision to ensure boundary violations do not occur.
• Community members will reflect on their own developmental process as students in relationship to their teacher(s); better understand the potential for boundary violations in student/teacher relationships; appreciate the predictable impact of boundary violations on individuals and on the community as a whole; and know how to respond should violations occur.

• Boards will increase their understanding of their fiduciary and governance responsibilities including ensuring support for teachers in securing supervision and self-care.
• Boards will be able to develop an ethics program if the organization lacks one or know how to improve their existing program.
• Teachers and boards will clarify their appropriate roles in leading a healthy spiritual community.
• All participants will understand their respective responsibilities for keeping the community safe.

The expected overall outcome is that communities will have greater ability to identify high-risk situations before boundary violations occur and have the strength of purpose needed to provide for the safety of all participants and leaders.

Steps for Conducting the Pilot

Application Form to Participate in the Pilot

Thank you for your interest in this training opportunity.

In order to complete the application, please select a format below, save a copy, fill in your responses, and return by email to Training@An-Olive-Branch.org by October 1, 2021. November 1, 2021.

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