Protocol for Conflict Prevention & Transformation

This protocol is meant to be used as a guide for preventing conflict and/or facilitating a process for transforming conflict when it arises within/between FundAction (FA) organs and/or individual consultants that are actively involved in coordinating and supporting the work of running FA.

The document is the result of community engagement by various FundAction members within and outside of FA organs. The initial draft was proposed by the Task Force in early 2024. It was shared with the Community Council (CC), the Facilitation Group and the Care Working Group for feedback. After discussing the content in several Care Working Group meetings and receiving individual feedback from several members, a new version was created. Following this, two sessions of a Care Assembly on Conflict Prevention & Resolution were organised to discuss the sections on harmful conducts and on the shape of Restorative Justice practices within FA. Later on, the final draft was shared with the whole community through the online Assembly for commenting. These comments have been incorporated into the final version of this document. Finally, voting for approval of the protocol took place in August-September 2024.

The content of this protocol is marked by past experiences of conflict and learnings by the FundAction community around systems and structures for working together and being in community. In particular, the events connected to the resignation of the Facilitation Group (FG) in 2023 led to the acknowledgment of the need for FA to have a clear structure in place for how to prevent and transform conflicts in the future. In this sense, the emphasis on some aspects of this protocol might seem excessive, while certain omissions could also be surprising. Moreover, the fact that all of these discussions appear together in this document is also a consequence of how things have evolved in the past and how entangled they have been. Given that conflict can take different shapes and forms, this protocol is meant to function as a preliminary guide and might take different directions in the future (see section 10 on amendments to the protocol).

General approach

● This protocol is meant to be interpreted and implemented on the basis of a feminist approach with the aim of building a care community, dismantling patriarchy and hierarchies. It is expected that FA community members will seek out training, literature, peer to peer learning and also ask for support in deepening their knowledge of these concepts in case of need in order to ensure the protocol is practised with a feminist, intersectional, anti-oppression framework.

● This protocol is to be used as a guideline in a constructive and reparative sense based on a commitment of building trust.

● If something is not formulated in this document, it doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t be considered. It requires engagement by the whole community to proactively identify, prevent and transform conflict.

● The aim of the protocol is to reconcile people involved in conflicts using a restorative rather than a punitive approach, and also to have clear rules in place for cases where roles and tasks are not respected and measures need to be taken.

Values of Fund Action & the Community

This protocol is guided by the governance framework and the values approved by the FundAction community as established in the Community Guidelines: democracy, inclusivity, openness, mutual trust and respect, peer-to-peer learning, transparency, autonomy, systemic change; and the values adopted by FA community members during the Care Assembly on Conflict Prevention & Resolution: creativity, motivation, equality, curiosity, teamwork, honesty, diversity, safety, courage, care, wonder, empathy, justice.

1.General agreements that can help prevent conflict

Conflict will happen. Focusing on prevention is the best way to avoid the escalation of tensions and harm. Having some general structures is key to promoting a joyful and fair working environment.

In order to promote this, all organs and individual consultants are expected to follow the basic rules outlined below. In addition to these basic rules, collective organs (CC, Board, FG, Working Groups, etc.) are expected to create an Internal Rules document at the beginning of their mandate, detailing how these points are implemented for them. Each organ reviews these rules at least once a year.

Basic rules:

1. Work should be organised around milestones determining how these are accomplished and how to keep track of them.

2. Each organ needs to define a coordination role and contact person (if not a shared email address). The coordinator is in charge of, at least, organising the meetings and the agenda and keeping track of milestones. This role doesn’t need to coincide with the legal role assigned to specific people in the Board or the Community Council.

3. Agenda points are decided by all members of the organ and mechanisms should be established to make sure that suggested points are addressed in a timely manner to avoid potential resulting tensions.

4. Groups need to ensure a clear definition of responsibilities and a well-balanced distribution of the workload between the members.

5. Each organ establishes processes to deal with gaps in the responsibilities as soon as they arise (e.g. if someone needs to step back for a short period, or there is additional work to be done). Generally, if possible, the responsibilities are redistributed among the members; otherwise, the group has the possibility to hire someone else for specific tasks or for replacing the leaving member until they come back.

6. The mechanism for regular self-evaluation of the time dedicated to work is based on self- tracking. Sharing this information is the responsibility of each member.

○ In the case of the FG + Admin person (and also other teams): At least one day per week should be for synchronous work for all the members. During this time, members are encouraged to have at least a short meeting for informal socialising and for planning the distribution and evaluation of milestones of the week. Each member will have a shared document to keep track of their concrete tasks, achievements and hours worked. The document will be updated regularly and stored in the root folder, making sure it is accessible by the CC and the rest of the FG.

○ In the case of the CC - All CC members must be present during their monthly meeting, as well as in extraordinary ones, except in case of last-minute emergencies. CC members will also keep track of their hours worked and the related tasks and will share this in a dedicated folder in the root folder, accessible by the CC and the FG.

○ In the case of other consultants - All paid individual consultants are asked to send a short report of what they have been doing and achievements to the FG members at agreed upon intervals.

7. In the case of the FG + Admin person, the distribution of workload vs. compensation vs. rest/illness is discussed within the safe space of a facilitated care meeting (see point 9 below). It is important to promote a clear and constructive discussion in a safe space, especially acknowledging the fact that it has been an issue in the past. If a member feels that the situation is not fair, the procedure described in the protocol for conflict transformation (see below) should be followed.

8. Rules for holidays, sick leave, parental leave, care responsibilities, travel related to FA work, etc.

○ In the case of teams/individual consultants that have a weekly commitment (e.g. FG + Admin person), general international and national holidays are paid as workdays in case they are during the week, to ensure appropriate rest time.

○ In the case of consultants with a yearly commitment (e.g. FG + Admin person), FA will pay for 8 free working days (one month) every year. Consultants can distribute this period in smaller ones, in agreement with the rest of the group.

○ In the case of the CC members, meetings are suspended for one month every year and there’s no parental or sick leave (since there’s no contract).

○ Consultants with a weekly commitment (e.g. FG and Admin person) are entitled to a reduced pay (at least 50%) during sick leave if they choose not to compensate for the hours not worked within a month. In the spirit of avoiding burnout, people are encouraged not to compensate for hours, and take sick leave instead. In addition, they are entitled to a reduced pay (at least 50%) for three months during parental leave. Internal rules of the organs can decide to raise these minima based on the budget. Contracts will not be extended to compensate sick/parental leave periods.

○ When people come back from holidays/sick/parental leave they will be eased into the work at a comfortable pace.

○ In the case of all working for FA, travel days and all subsequent days of FA related work while travelling are considered as full working days.

9. Periodical care meeting guided by a care facilitator:

○ In the case of the FG + Admin person, one care meeting on a monthly basis is mandatory for all members of the group. Individual sessions are also possible in case of necessity. These meetings include, at least the following:

■ Time to express how everyone is doing;

■ Time to express how they are feeling with shared work and one another;

■ Time to express specific needs that they may have.

○ Group sessions or individual sessions with a facilitator are possible concerning other consultants and the CC in case of necessity.

10. In case of extraordinary tasks that require a great amount of time/energy/work (e.g. the legal transition in the past or the organisation of the Annual Assembly), the FG should actively seek the community’s support and - in case this is not sufficient - hire another person/people for support with regards to a specific task.

11. This protocol will be attached as an annex to any agreements/contracts through which consultants will be hired, whether they are from the FA community and/or external consultants. They will be responsible for familiarising themselves with the protocol and following the steps outlined in the protocol as guidance in preventing and/or seeking support for transformation of any conflicts that may arise.

12. For transparency reasons, all organs need to keep track of their decisions and work:

- All organs keep track of their decisions by creating a shared document that includes all the meeting notes and key decisions made outside of meetings (e.g. by email, slack, or other channels). A summary of these decisions is regularly added to a dedicated space in the online platform.

- Each organ manages a shared folder (available in the root folder) where all the documents are stored and made available to the relevant members.

- All communication made by email concerning FA matters needs to copy the contact@fundaction.eu address as a way of maintaining institutional memory.

13. To promote good communication and understanding between organs, the following meetings are required:

- A facilitated monthly meeting between the CC and the FG+Admin. In this meeting, there should be time to:

- Share how things are going (within groups, but also personally if needed);

- Share updates related to the work of each organ.

- These meetings will also include the board members three times a year. On these occasions, there should be time to:

- Share how things are going (within groups, but also personally if needed);

- Share updates related to the work of each organ.

2. Individual commitments: relating to the collective through FA’s support

People working for FA take a commitment in the following areas:

Care and anti-oppression: To gain awareness and skills in relation to feminism, power, care, positionality and intersectionality in order to contribute to a free and equitable organisation.

Trauma: To improve their trauma literacy and gain awareness about how trauma affects their reactions to conflict and to other difficult situations that may arise at work. They commit to take care of themselves and others, and to ask for support in cases where personal feelings may become overwhelming.

Active listening and non-violent communication: When working with others, all members commit to active listening: trying to be fully present, listening to understand, not to respond; giving physical queues or using video conferencing reactions to express themselves while others are talking; paying attention to details and emphases; asking questions if they don’t understand; etc. They also commit to learn and implement non-violent communication as much as possible.

Burnout: To gain awareness about the factors and practices leading to burnout, to raise any needs in relation to personal burnout, and to take care of themselves and others in order to prevent it, asking for support when necessary.

FundAction commits to support all organ members and consultants, but also all members, offering basic training and tools in these areas. The Care Working Group is in charge of implementing this through P2P learning tools. Together we’ll build a strong caring community.

3. Restorative Justice (RJ) and how we see conflict

Conflict is normal. Sharing our lives with others generates tension, disagreement and coordination challenges. Conflict shouldn’t be avoided or disguised because it will only generate frustration and passive-aggressiveness. Often, we avoid/feed conflicting situations or confrontation because of deeper protection/defence mechanisms related to past trauma. At the same time, we can’t run away from it and, in fact, learning to process conflict together is key to building mutual trust.

The earlier the better: to address a conflict or a tension between two or more people, it’s best to raise the issue as early as possible. Often small issues become big problems just because we don’t pay attention to them when they arise.

Conflicts are not “solved” or eliminated but addressed and “transformed”. Conflicts are a part of life and disagreements are a healthy element that can support creating a dynamic working environment.

Instead of punitivism, Restorative Justice (RJ) is the approach towards harmful behaviour and conflict that is most aligned with FundAction’s values. While a punitive approach would list offences and punish them with a top-down approach that further stigmatises perpetrators, a restorative approach wants to involve all those affected by harmful conducts and facilitate collective learning. Here, processes will seek the reconciliation of the people involved and the restoration of the victims’ wellbeing and the wellbeing of others, even in serious cases, and even for offenders.

RJ, in our context, is based on four pillars: acknowledging Harmful conducts, placing them in Context, facilitating a Safe space for discussion, proceeding in taking (restorative and reparative) Action.

In the spirit of RJ, each of these pillars formulated below are meant to be used as examples and as points of departure for deeper discussions in a given situation. Many of the terms and concepts used cannot be predefined in this protocol and would rather require FA community members experiencing a conflict to define and come to a common understanding around each term and concept through constructive facilitation and participation.

The RJ approach aims to avoid expulsion of members from the FA community. However, in grave circumstances and unsuccessful attempts of RJ methods, an expulsion may become inevitable

a) Harmful conducts

This section outlines some of the harmful conducts identified by the Task Force, the Care Working Group, as well as FA Community members who took part in the Care Assembly on Conflict Prevention and Resolution. The conducts formulated here are non-exhaustive meaning that additional conducts can be identified and/or further elaborated based on each specific case/conflict situation.

Thus, we agree that certain behaviours (see list below) are not OK and should not be accepted.

When someone engages in these types of conduct, we take them seriously as members by reacting and starting a process of conflict transformation.

1. The following conducts are considered harmful, and therefore unacceptable for all FundAction members:

● Discriminatory conducts (comments, behaviours, jokes, etc.) are not tolerated. FA considers discriminatory the following:

○ Sexism

○ Misogyny

○ Racism

○ Homophobia

○ Transphobia

○ Religious discrimination

○ Ageism

○ Ableism

○ Other kinds of discrimination

● Publicly blaming others when we don’t agree with their political opinions;

● Not respecting personal boundaries (for example shouting as a way to express dominance, personal insults, etc.;

● Physical and/or psychological harassment;

● Gaslighting: to manipulate a person into doubting their own perceptions, experiences or understanding of events;

● Intentional ghosting: not reacting to people/group’s comments, requests or expectations in due time;

● Accusing someone who is protesting because of a harmful behaviour or structural position of being the aggressor/exaggerating when they speak up;

● Bullying, mobbing, controlling behaviours, and psychological manipulation;

● Not being open to new ideas and blocking them from being expressed/discussed.

2. In the case of consultants and members of FA organs, the following conducts are also considered unacceptable:

● Breach of trust: sharing personal information that has been shared in safe spaces;

● Obstructionism: Blocking decisions and activities, including not doing work that was committed, ignoring and/or postponing requests to discuss certain issues. This includes not giving everyone the possibility to contribute to the agenda of meetings;

● Working less or more than the hours established by the contract without informing the group and with no acceptable justification;

● Not putting the effort into understanding what someone tries to communicate;

● Criticising other people’s work without paying attention to context and/or with lack of adequate information;

● Repeatedly acting beyond the role and tasks assigned to the organ in the community guidelines;

● Unpreparedness;

● In the case of the board and CC, using the legal formal role to overstep the will of the community or the internal rules, for instance, to resist the implementation of this protocol;

● Imposing tasks or individual decisions not previously discussed;

● Pushing someone beyond their limits;

● Being late to meetings;

● Normalising a culture of overworking;

● Lack of consideration for explicit and implicit power relations, failing to check one’s own privilege;

● Lack of accessibility, including language barrier, hardware barriers, the format as a barrier;

● Failing to agree on the workload and division of tasks in advance;

● Silencing someone who has initiative;

● Mistaking a non-hierarchical structure for a lack of structure by resisting the creation and implementation of internal rules and processes: we need clear rules and roles, good coordination and a fair distribution of tasks in order to work in a feminist way to ensure horizontality and collective power-building;

● Refusing to take responsibility for collective work. Refusing to seek for consensus or consent around decisions when possible;

● Not taking into account and following guidelines and protocols that are in place, including internal rules decided by each collective organ.

b) Context

This section is a non-exhaustive list of questions mainly aimed at being a reminder to reflect on the context from a feminist and intersectional perspective, to better understand the dynamics and the nuances of a conflict, and to keep in mind that conflicts should be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

When a harmful conduct is identified, we need to ask a set of questions in relation to the specific context and its systemic causes. The following are examples of questions that can be asked, which can be adjusted and/or added to for each specific situation:

● How accessible is the space where the conduct/conflict is taking place? What about the language, the format and other elements?

● How are participants doing in terms of overwork and/or burnout? If someone is overworking, were other options considered and how long has this been the case?

● What are the expectations and how are they established?

● What is the personal situation of the people involved?

● What are the positions of privilege/oppression of the participants?

● Who else is affected/involved in the conflict (including people external to FA)? Do they see the situation as a problem? Do they also have these kinds of experiences?

● How is the group/organisation doing in terms of care? If there are any care meetings (consultants), are they working well?

● Is this the first time that this kind of conflict is happening in the group? Is this kind of conflict recognizable as a conflict within the organisational culture of the FundAction? Is this a kind of conflict that can also be recognisable in other contexts beyond FA?

● What options does the organisation have to support the person who needs rehabilitation/recovery or is facing any health conditions, including mental health? Are there any benefits from the local social security in the country where the person is living?

● What are the power dynamics at play? Who are the people in the group/organisation? What roles do they have? What are the relationships with the other people in the group?

● What practices (language used, asking/not asking for opinion, special regard/disregard to their opinion, etc.) feed into defining the different formal and informal roles in FundAction? E.g. Who are the people making decisions, who is part of the community, how are space & representation shaped?

c) Safe space for discussion

This section aims to define some of the elements of creating a safe space for discussion and dialogue in the FA community through a non-exhaustive list of suggestions/examples. The elaboration of what safe space means requires the participants engaged in an RJ process to discuss and come to an agreement around this concept collectively.

Thus, when there’s harmful conduct, we address the conflict together in a safe space. This includes:

● Establishing the rules and aims of the conversation;

● Acknowledgement of the harm/s. Discussing the causes and facts in relation to harmful behaviour;

● Non-violent communication;

● Non-judgmental attitude;

● Actively listening to all the perspectives, including the individuals directly involved, as well as “bystanders” and other people connected to the events;

● Acknowledging burnout and overworking;

● Examining the position of the people involved and recognizing privileges/oppressions;

● Recognition and validation of everyone's emotions;

● Participation of all the people involved;

● Documenting the process, making sure everyone agrees on what has been said and done.

d) Action

This section outlines some of the steps to agree on with the aim of repairing relationships and individual wellbeing. The following are just examples and other options can be agreed upon between the participants of the RJ process.

● Offering a formal apology;

● Stepping back from/changing/rotating roles;

● Changing working arrangements: considering other options to avoid an unfair distribution of tasks and/or overwork;

● Actively creating spaces for future dialogue;

● Proposing structural changes;

● Proposing formative activities;

● Follow-up/regular supervision (of the relationship between the people involved, of the tasks, of the working arrangements, etc.);

● Sharing certain information with the community;

● Mandatory training in a certain topic.

4. Practical steps

In order to address conflict early, the following guidelines are proposed:

● All teams will keep a collaborative approach and prioritise building trust in the group. Talking, listening to others, acknowledging different opinions and keeping an open mind should always be considered as key principles when trying to address conflicts.

● All teams will have periodic care meetings with a professional facilitator within a safe space where people can express themselves and how they are feeling individually and within the group in order to spot potential sources of conflict, to promote mutual understanding, to prevent resentment and to process small conflicts, as well as to prevent burnout (see basic rules above).

● Individual members of teams can also approach the professional facilitator individually to talk about personal/interpersonal issues.

● Time pressure is a major cause of tensions and distress as it limits the possibility of discussing. When time is short, it is encouraged to find ways to reduce time pressure and provide space and time to discuss and process while aiming to find a balance between, on the one hand, processing feelings and opinions, and, on the other hand, working efficiently. If the conflict cannot be processed within the group, or if there's harmful conduct and at least one of the members feels the need for further support, the Community Council will be informed and will be in charge of processing the case.

● The process is initiated when a person writes to any member of the CC to explain the situation and to request support. This person can decide whether to announce the support request to the rest of the FG/team members or not.

● In all cases of harmful conduct, the person raising the issue can decide to merely ask for specific individual support (like therapy sessions, peer support, etc.) or request the CC to start a RJ process.

● Within a week, the CC has the responsibility to:

○ Discuss the case and give an initial reply to the person explaining the concrete steps that will be followed;

○ Detect any competing interests (e.g. friendship with people involved) and decide appropriate measures to deal with it, including - when necessary – the non- participation of the CC member with competing interests in the procedure;

○ Appoint a professional facilitator to mediate the RJ process. The CC will prepare a list of potential facilitators beforehand and have it available in case of need;

○ In cases of discriminatory violence rooted in systemic, structural, institutional oppression, the truth of what the person is raising should be acknowledged and decisions will be made to restore a safe environment for that person based on their self-determination.

● Within one week at the earliest and ten days at the latest of the initial reply by the CC, the facilitator meets the person raising the issue to collect their experience, thoughts and narrations. Within two weeks from this initial meeting, the facilitator will identify other direct participants and collect their experience, thoughts and narrations too.

● Within one week at the earliest and ten days at the latest of gathering all the narrations, the CC will organise an initial RJ meeting hosted by the facilitator where everyone involved will share their views and common actions will be agreed. If agreement is not possible, further sessions will be organised.

● A member of the CC will attend all meetings in order to keep track of the process and register any decisions.

● If no agreement is possible after a reasonable number of sessions, or if the people involved don’t want to participate, the CC will meet and decide on concrete binding measures. Among other binding measures the CC may see fit, these measures can include:

○ Placing certain conditions on future activities and participation;

○ Requesting the attendance of trainings on a specific topic;

○ Terminating people’s contracts;

○ Suspending or terminating the membership in FA.

● The participants in the RJ process will never share personal information or information that the people involved don’t want to be shared with anyone outside the RJ safe space.

● When deemed necessary, the CC will involve professionals (e.g. mental health professionals, facilitators, legal professionals, etc.) to support the facilitator in the process of dealing with the case.

● In cases where a removal from membership is proposed by the CC (see section 8 below), the organ will plan a meeting to discuss the arguments. If the person agrees, the CC will inform the community of the decision to remove them and decide a period for consultation. If there are arguments against the removal, they interrupt the process and discuss further. Within two weeks after the consultation, the CC needs to make a final decision. No decision of suspension or removal can be taken without the consent of the harmed person unless the person who did harm continues to do harm (i.e.: by not acknowledging the harm they caused, by continuing similar harmful behaviour toward other members of FA, by refusing to take steps to repair the harm done, etc.) that influences other members of the community.

● At any time of the process, if the situation evolves in a way that creates conflict with one or more members of the CC, any FG member can request:

○ The intervention of the facilitator;

○ That more people from the community (and particularly from the care working group) are chosen to join the CC for this specific process (either by agreement or randomly, if agreement is not possible).

5. Internal decisions in the CC (or other organs implementing this protocol)

The general process is the following:

● CC members discuss as much as needed;

● CC members aim at consensus as a general decision-making method. They seek as much as possible active expression of everyone's thoughts (e.g.: by making rounds of word)mrather than silent consent;

● If consensus is not possible, decisions can be made by:

○ Consent (members agree to not block the majority decision, although they disagree);

○ Voting (they decide by majority, without the agreement of some people, in order to be able to move forward).

If a harmful conduct takes place within the CC, the Facilitation Group appoints a group of 3 randomly selected members with no conflict of interests to implement this protocol and decide according to these criteria. The same will happen if the conflict happens between the CC and the FG. A member of the FG or the CC not affected by the conflict will support the formation of the panel and clarify its role, bearing in mind that usually bystanders are also considered part of a conflict according to this protocol.

6. Suspension/Removal from organs/positions

In cases where a consultant or member breaks FA rules from section 2 (working hours, breach of trust, etc.), the CC (or FG if the breach is by a CC member) can decide on concrete consequences. A suspension or removal from any organ/position can be decided with the support of the external facilitator through a unanimous decision of the organ in case of serious and reiterated unacceptable behaviours or serious and reiterated inability to match the time commitment requirement and fulfil the tasks assigned. In case of suspension, clear steps should be established for the timeframe of and actions to be taken during suspension. In case of removal, a decision should be made and implemented only after attempting other remedies, including the above-mentioned steps for the RJ process, as well as reiterated requests to fulfil the assigned tasks and explicit and unsuccessful admonition by the CC (or FG if the breach is by a CC member). The fact that a person is legally registered as a member of one of the organs cannot be used as a reason to stay in the role and the final decision for suspension/removal should be accepted.

7. Resigning/leaving FundAction

In cases where a member decides to leave FundAction or their specific role, they can inform of their decision via e-mail and further steps will be taken by FundAction members to clarify what their needs are in cases where harm has been done. FundAction will take responsibility in cases where people who are traumatised and/or burned out from a conflict that was not prevented and/or transformed. The possibility to cover at least 50% of psychological sessions for 6 months has been offered in the past and can be offered if the person leaving feels that it can be useful for them. Other kinds of individual support can be offered based on the needs of the leaving member.

In the case of people leaving legal roles (CC and Board), the FG+Admin will make sure that they are deregistered within two weeks after being informed of their final decision.

8. Expulsion criteria

Expulsions of FundAction members are allowed only in specific and extreme cases, such as gender/racist/ableist violence and serious offences (e.g.: psychological or physical harassment), and/or when harmful behaviour continues. Expulsion should be possible not as a sanction, but when the permanence of that person in the organisation creates a risk for other people’s safety.

In case discriminatory violence has been committed, the need for expulsion is ascertained by giving privileged attention to the will of the affected person.

9. Legal liability: Protection of the board members

In order to prevent conflict between the Board and the other organs, and also to ensure that there’s protection from potential legal responsibilities, the former needs to have a say in key decision-making processes. The following elements need to be respected in order to promote a trust-based collaboration between the Board and the rest of the organisation:

● In addition to the publication of the key decisions and activities on the online platform, the FG+Admin will inform the board regularly on any activities that might have an impact on legal responsibility;

● The Board has access to the root folder, including all meeting notes and also any documents needed to assess the legal consequences of the decisions of the FG, consultants and other FA members;

● Each Board member has the possibility to suspend the implementation of a decision made by the FG, consultants or FA members in order to ask for legal advice if they suspect that the decision puts the Board under the risk of being legally liable. Decisions can be suspended for 10 natural days. If the legal advisor suggests there’s a risk of illegal activity, the Board can veto the decision;

● The Board can invite the FG to reconsider a decision if it considers that it is in tension with the non-profit nature of the foundation and/or with its statutes and values;

● The Board has the possibility to activate the processes provided in this protocol in case of conflict situations that can impair the legal functioning of the foundation and the respect of its statutes (including the founding values);

● The same process can be activated in case of serious mismanagement of the FG that could affect the Board members’ legal responsibility;

● Board members attend a meeting with the FG and the CC every 3-4 months. The Board members receive a compensation of 100 euros to attend meetings in an informed way;

● Members of the FG and other consultants are contractually bound to the foundation and the Board has the right to terminate their contracts if there’s a breach of their contracts, or to the values or statutes of the foundation.

10. Amendments to the protocol

Changes to the text of this protocol can be proposed by any FA member and will be processed through the Care Working Group according to the priorities of the group. Proposals will be shared with and approved by the community through the Online Assembly or the Annual Assembly.

Changes that are a legal requirement can be approved without the online assembly.