The Happening Project was created to support justice-oriented practitioners like you in developing your alternative practice or your project for collective liberation, and to connect you with a community of folx doing the same.
“I just want us to be building a million different experiments together – that’s how we’ll get free.” — Mariame Kaba
We’ve got freebies, courses, guides, workbooks and collective support for setting up your practice/project. We’re always creating new resources to support you in your practice. Check back for updates!
The Happening Project is a course and community helping you build a practice that not only supports your individual sustainability, but also contributes to collective liberation and community care. Build and redefine your practice from start to finish with:
No question is off-limits, and we look at all topics of consideration through a systemic, political lens that recognizes the messiness of being complicit in the medical industrial complex, while dreaming up liberatory practices for our collective wellness outside it’s confines.
With the Happening project, you won’t be going through an intense amount of information on your own, or following a practice-building framework that hasn’t considered our core ethics.
Instead, work through comprehensive modules at your own pace, then gather with fellow practitioners to workshop, get feedback, and co-create liberatory experiments together. This program was built by a practicing therapist committed to anti-oppressive practice, specifically for:
MA, RCC-ACS (she/her)
I’m an avid explorer of wonder and possibility, aspirational human database for systemic awareness, co-creator with the magic that still manages to survive in this dumpster fire world, lover of all things with faces that probably shouldn’t have faces on it & cat-reel aficionado.
I navigate the world as a cisqueer, working-turned-middle class, straight-sized settler from Hong Kong who lives with chronic pain and ADHD. My ancestors come from roots in Chaozhou and Nanjing, and a lineage of creating sneaky practices to survive necropolitics, and refugeeism.
founding and running Venturous Counselling and Reflecting on Justice, a virtual community for therapists to unlearn systemic oppression together through free resources, a community membership, and various training programs. As well as co-founding and co-running Prospect Counselling, a Queer, POC-led, radical training practice that redirects proceeds from services to provide further training so that SDQTBIPOC+ communities can access justice-oriented counselling, while funding projects for collective healing within communities. I am also part of the operations team at Healing in Colour and clinically supervise/provide business consulting to various local non-profit agencies and group practices.
Before becoming a therapist, I was formally trained in graphic design, marketing, and business management!
The modules Pt.1
Liberatory practice is all about world-building. What kind of world do you want to build with your practice? Define the principles that will guide your decision-making.
This session will guide your through:
When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one. Define your practice niche and core ethics while co-creating policies and services that amplify the impact of your practice.
These sessions will guide you through:
There’s more!
Websites don’t have to cost a bajillion dollars to be effective. Most people don’t need the super fancy custom stuff AND there are plenty of ways to make something look and feel custom without having to actually reinvent the wheel. Let’s focus on the difference that actually makes a difference.
These sessions will guide you through:
Let’s go through all the nitty gritty operational building blocks so you can keep your practice sustainable and functional.
This session will guide you through:
Yes, there’s still more!
Now that your foundations are set, let’s get you out there! Create marketing and outreach practices that align with the impact you want to make in the world, while being sustainable and nourishing in the long run.
This session will guide you through:
Operating through private practice and being complicit in the medical industrial complex is messy and can bring up all sorts of questions to reconcile with our ethics.
This session will guide you through:
The Pricing
Payment plans available. 50% of all proceeds go towards mutual aid and collective healing initiatives in so-called BC.
Q&A
Live sessions happen weekly so we can support each other in gathering momentum and getting your practice up and running.
The specific timing depends per cohort. Each cohort requires at least 6 participants to run so if you are able to gather 6 of your community members who want to take this program, I’m happy to adjust the time specifically to your group.
That depends on how you built your practice! This program is rooted in our liberatory ethics and provides a framework to align our practice to this work. I go through these processes regularly to tweak my practice and address complicities in capitalism and the medical industrial complex and have found it helpful even though I established Venturous many years ago.
In particular, I find the group processes especially nourishing as I’m always left with seeds of reflection I hadn’t considered before.
It could! The program was designed to get everything up and running by the end of it. That being said, ableism and urgency under capitalism is rampant. Please take care of your bodyminds as you go through the program. You’ll have access to the online content for a full year and in the Commons and the Intensive enrollment option, we build community as part of the process, so you can always come back to it later and structure supports to do so.
Yes! The program was built as a overarching framework for you to fill in your own personalized details. The only instance where location may be an area of consideration is in session 6 where we talk about tax and legal obligations. Through the program we’ll support you in verifying this information for your particular context anyway, so it won’t affect your experience with the program.
Recorded modules are about 30-minutes to an hour long each week and facilitated co-creation sessions in the Commons enrollment options are set to be 2 hours long each week. The rest depends on the time you decide to spend on the action-guides and processing prompts. Some weeks are more intensive than others if you’re planning to go through the program in real time with your co-creation cohort. Generally, the website and branding sessions as well as the business model co-creation session take more prep work.
This answer might surprise you given the gatekeeping that happens in capitalism, but YES. Absolutely!
Depending on your proximity to privilege and experience of systemic barriers, I ask that you use your own counsel to decide how many enrollments to purchase. Your tuition goes towards keeping this program sustainable and towards mutual aid and collective healing initiatives in so-called BC.
I will not be policing this self-reflection process and trust that you and your community are accountable to your positionality.
For many folx who face significant systemic barriers due to race, disability, incarceration, etc. taking me up on this offer may be a difficult process. If there are any feelings of shame or accusations of undeservingness arising for you, I want you to know that this is exactly what the Happening Project was built for. This is not charity or benevolence, but one messy attempt at equitable practice and ethical alignment in the midst of capitalism.
If you’d like to discuss reciprocal resource sharing options outside of monetary exchange, please email connect@venturouscounselling.com and let’s chat!
Yes! Please do! You can book with me directly here. Or send me an email at connect@venturouscounselling.com. 50-minute personalized strategy sessions are $195.
Aside from extenuating circumstances like family crisis and the onset of long-term medical concerns, the return policy for the program is 14 days. For the Commons and the Intensive enrollment options, we will not be able to offer a refund for sessions you’ve already taken part in. In these cases, I recommend deferring your enrollment to the next cohort or gifting your enrollment to a community member.
Client love
Hear what your fellow therapists are saying about their experience with the Happening Project and/or business consulting supports.
Click to access
These resources are born from real questions and challenges faced by practitioners like you, shaped by our community’s needs, and offered freely as part of our vision for transformative change in mental health care.
occupying the stolen, ancestral territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh), Qayqayt, and kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem) peoples. Our relationship with these lands dictates our commitment to understanding and responding to the ongoing impacts of colonization in our practices in and out of the counselling room.
Learn more about the land you’re occupying at native-land.ca
No one taught us business practices in life, let alone grad school! These resources were born from real questions and challenges faced by practitioners just like you. No more reinventing the wheel on your own, we’ve gotchu!
