The Backbone Cam-paign will offer a two-day training with Leticia Nieto, PhD, co-author of “Beyond Inclusion Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone.”

Organizers say Nieto will present her models to analyze the complexities of power, rank and status in interactions with attention to social context. The training is designed to facilitate communication and empowerment. Participants will learn skills for designing more effective interventions in situations impacted by social differences. The focus will be on clarifying the complexities of working across significant differences and on understanding the dynamics of oppression.

The cost is a sliding scale, $155-$500, with discounts available to island residents. All registrants will receive a copy of Dr. Nieto’s book, which she co-authored with islander Margot Boyer.

Nieto has been working for three decades with service providers, community groups and learning communities, including higher education. She is a professor in the Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology program at Saint Martin’s University, where she received the Outstanding Faculty of the Year Award in 2005. As a psychotherapist and teacher, she applies her background in human development to anti-oppression education. She specializes in psychodrama, playback theater and theater of the oppressed. Backbone Campaign organizers say her book analyzes the psychological dynamics of privilege and oppression and offers readers ways to develop skills to promote social justice. She shares those ideas with groups in the Northwest and internationally.

The workshop will begin at 9 a.m. Friday, Jan. 5, and continues until 5 p.m. Saturday, Jan 6. Location information will be sent upon registration.

To register, see backbonecampaign.org.