Celebrating What We Accomplished at NCDD 2016

Posted on October 19, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We with the NCDD team want to say one more giant THANK YOU to all of those involved in making the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation an enormous success last weekend! It was without a doubt one of our best conferences yet, but it couldn’t have been as incredible as it was without you!

NCDD 2016 featured 5 pre-conference events, 54 workshops, 3 engaging plenaries, 3 mentoring sessions, over a dozen breakout discussions during our Networking & Collaboration space, a great field trip, and countless connections made. We also recorded several in-person interviews with NCDD members about the projects their working on which we’ll be turning into videos and podcasts soon. It felt like a whirlwind of wonderful people, good conversation, deep learning, and unlocked potential – you really missed out if you weren’t there!

NCDD is so grateful to the over 350 diverse innovators, practitioners, scholars, elected officials, and young leaders who attended this year’s conference, our tireless volunteers, our generous conference sponsors, our featured speakers, the mentors and mentees, and everyone else who worked to make NCDD 2016 so very special! panorama-smaller

Following up, Moving forward

While we certainly didn’t figure out how to bridge all of the divides that need healing over the weekend, we did share stories of how our field has already started that work, we gained insights on how we can grow and strengthen that work, and many collaborations, partnerships, and new projects were sparked during the gathering. We encourage all of our attendees to do the follow up and deeper connecting needed to make those collaborations and projects materialize.

To support our members in following up and to help those who couldn’t be there to stay connected, we created a conference Google drive folder, which we highly recommend that everyone check out – please add your notes, slides from your presentations, and other info to the folder for everyone to share! We also hope you’ll upload the best pictures you took to this folder so we can see all of the smiling faces of NCDD!

We also encourage you to keep the conversation going on social media with the hashtags #NCDD2016, #NCDD, #BridgingOurDivides, and #NCDDEmergingLeaders or by participating in our NCDD Facebook Discussion Group. Don’t forget to follow NCDD on Facebook and Twitter!

group-talking NCDD conferences are always an in-person reminder of just how broad and powerful this field is. We are truly honored to be working to support our network and the important work you do. We will continue to share more in-depth updates on specific outcomes and next steps that emerged from the conference over the next weeks, so continue to check back here on the news blog for more.

For now, let’s bask in the great memories we made during this incredible gathering of our field while we make plans for advancing our work until the next time we all meet together in 2018!

Application for Nevins Fellow Placements Closes Friday!

Posted on October 17, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

As our NCDD 2016 emcee John Gastil reminded us during our incredible conference this weekend, time is running out for D&D, public engagement, and transpartisan organizations to apply to receive a Nevins Democracy Fellow! The application to host a D&D-trained honors student to work with your organization for two months at no cost is closing this Friday, October 21st, so be sure to apply today!

You can find the application at www.tinyurl.com/NevinsFellowApplication.

Haven’t heard of the McCourtney Institute for Democracy‘s Nevins Democracy Leaders Program before? We’ve mentioned it on here on the blog, and we also recommend that you look over the Frequently Asked Questions document that McCourtney created for potential applicant organizations. NCDD also hosted an informative discussion about the program with the McCourtney team during a recent Confab Call, you can listen to the recording of that call by clicking here.

Hosting a Nevins Fellow is like bringing on a new full-time staffer for the summer, and it’s a great way for your to build organizational capacity while helping bring more young people into our field and growing the next generation of D&D leaders. We strongly encourage our member organizations to apply today for this amazing opportunity!

NCDD’s Leadership is Evolving!

Posted on October 10, 2016 by Sandy Heierbacher

Hi, everyone! With our national conference in Boston just days away, I am excited to announce some important changes that are happening within NCDD.

Our conference is taking place just weeks before one of the most polarizing elections our country has ever experienced, and our intention is to lift up the many untold and under-told stories about how members of this community have bridged the divides that seem insurmountable to so many right now. No matter the outcome of the election, our community will be needed more than ever — and NCDD will be here to help keep this community connected, informed, and equipped.

Courtney Breese (left) and Sandy Heierbacher

In order to best serve our members and our own needs, and to meet these emerging opportunities and challenges, we are shifting to a new leadership model. Program Director Courtney Breese is stepping up to Managing Director, and will be taking over our day-to-day operations. I will become Founding Director which will free me up to focus more on what I truly love — supporting and nurturing our network.

This shift in NCDD’s leadership is part of a broader evolution that the organization is experiencing. Four of our current Board members — Barbara Simonetti, Marla Crockett, John Backman and Diane Miller — are nearing the end of their terms, and we are about to welcome some wonderful new Board members into the fold: Jacob Hess, Betty Knighton, Simone Talma Flowers and Wendy Willis, who will be joining Martin Carcasson and Susan Stuart Clark. In the coming year, we’ll focus more on strategic planning and fundraising in order to enhance our service to you and this wonderful community, which has grown from a group of 50 founding organizations in 2002 to a vibrant network of 2,300 members and 38,000 subscribers in 2016.

On a personal note, Courtney and I have worked closely for years both in her roles as a member of the Board and then as Program Director. I don’t know of a more calm, competent person, and have nothing but faith in Courtney. My own passion lies in creating networks and building supportive, collaborative communities, and after 14 years directing NCDD, I am drawn to new possibilities for how I can help build and strengthen others’ work. You are some of the most creative, intelligent and good-hearted people I’ve ever met, and I look forward to working with you, our wonderful staff, our Board, and other contributors in this new role.

I’m excited about what lies ahead — both for me and the network. Our community has become ever more active and responsive to each other, generously sharing their experiences and know-how over multiple platforms and forming many dozens — if not hundreds — of partnerships over the years. Our website will continue to provide a clearinghouse of thousands of resources and news items.

Courtney, our Board, and I intend to work together to see NCDD continue to grow and thrive so this field can have a greater and greater impact on the world.

Sincerely,

Sandy Heierbacher, Founding Director, on behalf of
Courtney Breese, Managing Director and the NCDD Board

Showcase Sessions at the 2016 NCDD Conference

Posted on October 1, 2016 by Sandy Heierbacher

Showcase2014-1 We’re excited to share the final list of our featured presenters in this year’s “D&D Showcase” — a highly anticipated, high-energy event held on the first night of the 2016 NCDD conference. The Showcase is a fun way for you to meet some of the movers-and-shakers in our field and learn about their leading-edge projects, programs and tools.

Showcase presenters are asked to prepare a brief spiel to use as a conversation starter during this un-timed session, to provide handouts so you can follow up after the conference, and to prepare an eye-catching poster so people can easily identify their topic. More about how the Showcase works is up at www.ncdd.org/15606.

Assessing Civic Engagement Needs

Susan Jeghelian, Executive Director and Madhawa Palihapitiya, Associate Director, MA Office of Public Collaboration

A recent legislative study by MOPC, the MA state dispute resolution agency, assessed civic engagement needs around destructive public conflict in local communities and provided policy recommendations to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for improved societal results.

Citizen Science

Chris Santos-Lang, Facilitator, Citizen Science Belleville

The most famous use of citizen science may have been to instigate reform of the Flint, Michigan, water supply. As science advances–especially science of the mind, of values, and of the divide–so does the importance of this form of dialog.

Conversation Café

Keiva Hummel, Conversation Café Coordinator, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation

Conversation Cafés are 90-minute hosted conversations, held in a public setting like a café, where anyone is welcome to join. A simple format helps people feel at ease and gives everyone who wants it a chance to speak.

CU Dialogues Program

Pilar Prostko, Program Coordinator/Facilitator, University of Colorado Boulder

The CU Dialogues Program facilitates dialogues that engage diverse members of the University community in honest conversation with one another across differences of all kinds. The Program also offers a 3-credit undergraduate course, “Dialogue Across Difference,” which offers students the opportunity to learn what dialogue entails, practice dialogue, and be trained as dialogue facilitators.

Dialogue Playing Cards

Peter Nixon, Founder, Potential Dialogue

Dialogue Playing Cards are regular playing cards featuring a different dialogue behavior on each card. They are great for stimulating discussion on ways to improve dialogue in teams and organizations as well as teaching and training dialogue to people of all ages, in families, schools, university and business.

Drawing Lines

Lynn Osgood, Principal, GO Collaborative

The Drawing Lines project was an arts-based civic engagement project funded by ArtPlace America, that asked the question – what role can the arts play in the context of historic political change? What emerged was a spectrum on arts-based engagement projects and a LOT of lessons learned on how to administrate such projects.

Harwood Institute

Marla Crockett, Certified Coach, The Harwood Institute

Learn about The Harwood Institute’s Turning Outward approach and how to develop a deep knowledge of your community and use it as a reference point to make better choices and judgments. Find out how you can be trained in this approach and deepen your impact.

Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue

Robin Prest, Program Director, Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue

Know someone who has demonstrated, internationally, excellence in the use of dialogue? Simon Fraser University’s Centre for Dialogue is now accepting nominations for the 2017/18 Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue, and would love to hear your suggestions.

Journal of Public Deliberation

Laura Black, Associate Professor, Ohio University

JPD is a place for NCDDers to find published research on tools and methods and to potentially publish reflections from their practices. Large System Change Steve Waddell Principal NetworkingAction Large systems change (LSC) is a new field of knowledge and action. It engages many, many people and organizations over significant geographic expanse; it addresses issues in need of transformation and radical change.

Learning to Deliberate

Katy Harriger, Professor and Department Chair, Dept. of Politics and International Affairs

At Wake Forest we have just completed a study of the long term impact of learning to deliberate (to be published by the Kettering Foundation this fall as a monograph). We incorporated deliberative dialogue into our first year experience course for new students and have used it to discuss issues of diversity and inclusion on campus.

Let’s Talk About It

John Ungerleider, Professor, SIT Graduate Institute

“Let’s Talk About It: A Guide to Leading Youth Dialogue” presents dialogue principles, structures, and activities that can help a facilitator of youth dialogue prepare to deepen participants’ positive experience. The short manual presents simple steps of youth dialogue planning and design, communication training for participants, and effective facilitation–with explanations of rationale behind approaches, and examples that have been tested in years of multicultural youth empowerment programs at the School for International Training.

Liberals Guide to Conservatives

J. Scott Wagner, Founder, Reach the Right

Working with the world’s leading academic experts on ideology, J. Scott Wagner has written an informal, inspirational, story-filled guide that wends its way through neurology, personality, and biases to help us understand and work well with each other.

Loomio

MJ Kaplan, Lead for US Growth, Loomio

Loomio is open source software that enables inclusive, collaborative decisions for groups in 110 countries globally – in and across communities, universities, governments, businesses and networks. Loomio is a social enterprise and a worker owned cooperative. Loomio’s innovative, flat structure is a leading model of emerging workplaces that are more creative, engaging and productive.

NarraFirma: Story Project Software

Cynthia Kurtz, Independent Consultant and Researcher

NarraFirma is open source companion software to the textbook “Working with Stories in Your Community or Organization“. NarraFirma helps your group collaboratively plan a story project, collect stories, ask questions about them, look for patterns in what you’ve collected, plan workshops, and reflect on what you’ve learned.

National Dialogue Network

John Spady, Founder, National Dialogue Network

NDN is the recipient of the 2012 Catalyst Award from NCDD. Come and learn about the $20,000 available in grants to all NCDD members. NDN seeks to coordinate collaborative local conversations into mindful national dialogue.

Participedia

Pat Scully, Managing Director, Participedia

The Participedia Project is an open-source, global research partnership whose primary goals are to map and make sense of the growing universe of new channels of citizen involvement in government and other forms of public problem solving. Anyone can join the Participedia community and help crowdsource, catalogue, and compare participatory political processes around the world. In addition to our Showcase, we will also make available a brief online survey for conference participants who would like to share their ideas about how the information we are gathering can best inform and support the work of practitioners in the field of dialogue and deliberation.

The Peacebuilding Process of Reconciliation

Virginia Swain, Founder and Director, Institute for Global Leadership

PPR is an approach and practice that is uniquely inclusive, visionary, reflective and restorative–healing the cycle of violence through inner governance, re-envisioning the common humanity of perpetrators and victims, socially responsible action that transcends self-interest, and mobilizing the will of the people for common issues.

PlaceSpeak

Colleen Hardwick, Founder and CEO, PlaceSpeak

How do you consult with people online within specific geographical boundaries… and prove it? The answer is PlaceSpeak, a pioneering location-based smart city civic engagement platform. Currently, online citizen engagement is anonymous and not tied to place. This has led to the proliferation of trolls, sock puppets, astroturfing and other forms of online dysfunction designed to skew and distort public opinion. PlaceSpeak’s vision is to improve the quality and legitimacy of decision-making and public policy development by modernizing authentication of digital identity, protecting privacy by design and ‘making it real’.

SmartParticipation

Joshua Brooks, e-Government Fellow, and Brian Post, Lead Technologist, CeRI (Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative), Cornell Law School

SmartParticipation, developed by Cornell University, is an innovative and adaptable platform for informed, inclusive and insightful online discussion. Now open source.

The Civility Scorecard

Russ Charvonia, President, National Civility Center

The Civility Center has developed this Scorecard to aid in evaluating the degree of civility in speeches. Just in time for the US Presidential Election!

Transpartisan Review

Jim Turner, Attorney/Partner, Swankin and Turner

Launching alongside the 2017 Presidential Inauguration, The Transpartisan Review will be an online journal promoting new ideas in political engagement and exploring ways to bring people together who are now in conflict to solve problems that otherwise seem insoluble. Learn more at www.transpartisanreview.com.

Trusted Sharing

Ruth Backstrom, Director of Marketing & Outreach, Trusted Sharing

Trusted Sharing is a set of online tools and spaces for hosting deeper conversations using specific facilitation methods.

Application Opens to Work with 2017 Nevins Fellows

Posted on September 22, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

NCDD was proud to host a special Confab Call this week with our partners at the McCourtney Institute for Democracy – an NCDD member organization and the host of the Nevins Democracy Leaders Program – who shared a presentation on the incredible opportunity for D&D organizations to take advantage of their Nevins Democracy Leaders Program. Nearly two dozen organizations participated in the call, which marked the launch of the 2016-17 application for organizations who want to host a bright, D&D-trained student who will work with their organization for two months of next summer at no cost.

We are encouraging all of our member organizations to apply today for the chance to host a Nevins Fellow next summer! Having a Nevins Fellow work with you is like bringing on a new full-time staffer, so it’s a great way for your organization to finally take on a special project you haven’t had time for, get extra help with your big summer engagements, or increase your organizational capacity overall – all while helping bring more young people into our field and growing the next generation of D&D leaders!

Opportunities like this don’t come often or last long, so we encourage you to make sure to apply for a Nevins Fellow before the October 21st deadline. You can find the application at bit.ly/nevinsapp.

If you haven’t heard of the Nevins program before or just want more information, there are tons of ways to learn more. You can start with the Frequently Asked Questions document that McCourtney created for potential applicants. We also had an informative discussion on the Confab Call with the McCourtney team, who covered lots of the important details about the program, and you can listen to the recording of that call by clicking here. You can also get a better sense of what the program experience is like from the student’s perspective by checking out this blog post from a 2016 Nevins Fellow about their summer fellowship with the Close-Up Foundation.

We can’t speak highly enough about the Nevins program’s students who applicants will have the chance to work with or about the value of this program’s contributions to the D&D field. We know that these young people will add enormously to the organizations they work with and that this program is helping secure the future of our field – a wonderful testament to vision of the program founder and NCDD member David Nevins. We encourage you to apply today!

NCDD Endorses NICD Standards of Conduct for Presidential Debates

Posted on September 21, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

NCDD is proud to announce that we are officially endorsing the set of standards of conduct for civility during the Presidential debates that our member organization the National Institute for Civil Discourse recently released. We are standing with NICD and other organizations in calling for civility during the debates because we believe that civility demonstrated in these events can be a step toward bridging our divides nationally. We encourage you to read NICD’s announcement about the standards of conduct below and to sign their petition for moderators to adopt them by clicking here.

The National Institute for Civil Discourse Calls on Presidential Debate Moderators to Enforce Civility, Releases Debate Standards for Upcoming Presidential Debates

We released a set of Debate Standards today that we are asking the presidential debate moderators to adopt in order to ensure that the debates are fair, informative, and civil. More than 60 organizations, including the AARP, have already signed on to the standards, which contain guidelines for moderators, the audience, and the candidates themselves.

In addition to AARP, a wide range of organizations endorsed the standards. Types of organizations include education institutions, such as the Tufts University’s Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, University of California Berkeley Center on Civility & Democratic Engagement and University of Virginia Center for Politics; forums, such as the City Club of Cleveland and City Club of Portland; and faith organizations, such as that Faith and Politics Institute and Interfaith Alliance. A complete list can be found on NICD’s website at: http://nicd.arizona.edu/standards-conduct-debates.

Join us in asking moderators, debaters and audience members to raise themselves to these standards and agree to use them in your own everyday interactions.

Sign our petition asking the Presidential debate moderators to adopt these standards for the upcoming debates

Revive Civility with us, our democracy depends on it.

Sincerely,
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer

Standards of Conduct for the Presidential Debates

I want debaters to:

Be respectful of others in speech and behavior

Answer the question being asked by the moderator

Make ideas and feelings known without disrespecting others

Take responsibility for past and present behavior, speech and actions

Stand against incivility when faced with it

I want moderators to:

Address uncivil behavior by naming it and moderating the conversation to move toward a more respectful dialogue

Enforce debate rules equally

Hold candidates accountable by challenging each candidate to speak the truth and act with integrity

Treat all candidates equally in regards tothe complexity of questions and debate rules

Be respectful when interacting with candidates

I want audience members to:

Be respectful of other audience members, the candidates and moderators in speech and behavior

Refrain from creating disturbances to other audience members, candidates and moderators

Take responsibility for personal behavior, speech and actions

Speak against incivility by reminding candidates it is not acceptable

Practice active listening when someone else is speaking, seeking to understand them

NCDD 2016 Schedule & Workshop List Announced!

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We at NCDD are thrilled to announce that we recently published the official schedule and list of conference sessions and workshops for the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation this Oct. 14-16 in Boston!

NCDD 2016 promises to be the most exciting NCDD conference to date! As always, we’ve planned the conference weekend to be full of activity, learning, and connecting. It includes rich pre-conference offerings, our famously engaging plenary sessions, experiential field trips, the D&D Showcase, and a new Open Space – there is going to be something for everyone! Be sure to have a look at the full NCDD 2016 conference schedule at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016/schedule.

And of course, it wouldn’t be an NCDD conference without a smorgasbord of incredible workshops and sessions hosted by the brightest leaders and innovators in our field. NCDD 2016 will feature six concurrent workshop block with over 50 super diverse sessions that span the breadth and depth of the work being done by those in our field who are Bridging Our Divides, while also featuring some of the most exciting new initiatives and successful case studies in D&D. We encourage you to check out the full list of sessions and workshops at www.ncdd.org/ncdd2016/workshops.

If you’ve been waiting to register for NCDD 2016, wait no longer! This schedule and list of conference sessions is just more proof that this year’s gathering will be one of the most engaging, catalytic NCDD events yet, and you won’t want to miss out!

The conference is less than a month away now, and we can’t wait to be with 400 of the most engaged and innovative leaders in this work! We look forward to seeing you in October!

Learn How to Apply for a Nevins Fellow on 9/21 Confab Call

Posted on September 15, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

As we recently announced, NCDD is hosting a special Confab Call this Wednesday, September 21st from 12-1pm Eastern / 9-10am Pacific with the McCourtney Institute for Democracy. This call is the best place to learn how to apply for the amazing opportunity to have a D&D-trained student fellow come work with your organization at no cost and make sure your application is successful, so we strongly encourage our NCDD member organizations to register today! Confab bubble image

During the Confab, McCourtney’s Senior Scholar John Gastil and Managing Director Christopher Beem will provide an overview of their Nevins Democracy Leaders Program, which trains college students in D&D and transpartisan leadership skills and then fast tracks them into related careers through placing them in Fellowship positions with leading organizations in the field. Becoming a Nevins host organization is the perfect way to cultivate and prepare the next generation of young D&D leaders while helping your organization build capacity, and this call will be the best place to learn how you can have the best shot at being matched with a Nevins Fellow through their competitive application process.

The call will be full of information and pointers about how to apply for a Fellow, plus it may even feature insights and reflections from past Nevins Fellows on what the experience was like for them. The application will open shortly after the call, but participants in this Confab will have the inside track, so don’t miss this great opportunity! We look forward to talking more with you on the call.

Join NCDD Confab Call on the Nevins Fellowship Program on Sept. 21st!

Posted on September 6, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

We encourage our NCDD member organizations to register to join us for a special Confab Call on Wednesday, September 21st from 12-1pm Eastern / 9-10am Pacific that can help your organization build capacity while helping the emerging student leaders of our field gain skills and experience in D&D work!

NCDD is hosting an exciting presentation and discussion with the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, who will be sharing about the incredible opportunity for organizations to host a D&D-trained student fellow at no cost next summer through their Nevins Democracy Leaders Program! You won’t want to miss it!

This is a rare and competitive opportunity for leading organizations in our field, and this Confab Call will be one of the best ways to find out more about how your group can take advantage of this program, so make sure to register today to save your spot on the call!

The Nevins Democracy Leaders Program was founded in 2014 after a gift from David Nevins, an NCDD Sustaining Member. The program provides Penn State students with education and training in transpartisan leadership skills by exposing them to a variety of viewpoints and philosophies, as well as teaching critical thinking along with the tools of dialogue and deliberation.

But the flagship work of fostering the next generation of democracy leaders centers on the yearly initiative to place Nevins Program students in unique fellowship position with organizations focused on D&D, transpartisan dialogue, and civic renewal – that means organizations like yours! Stipends and living expenses are provided to the students through the program so that organizations can bring these bright, motivated students into their work for a summer at no cost to them. It’s an amazing opportunity for everyone involved! You can get a better sense of what the program experience is like by checking out this blog post from a 2016 Nevins Fellow about their summer fellowship with the Close-Up Foundation.

NCDD is proud to have partnered last year with the McCourtney Institute to help identify organizations in the field that can host Nevins fellows, and we’re continuing the partnership this year. This Confab Call is the best way to get your organization plugged into the process, so be sure to register today to learn more about the program and how to apply!

On this Confab, McCourtney’s Senior Scholar John Gastil and Managing Director Christopher Beem will provide an overview of the Nevins program and its aims, discuss the training that the future fellows are going through, and share more about how your organization can take advantage of this great chance to help cultivate the next generation of D&D leaders while getting more support for your work – all for FREE! We can’t wait to talk more with you on the call!

About NCDD’s Confab Calls…

NCDD’s Confab Calls are opportunities for members (and potential members) of NCDD to talk with and hear from innovators in our field about the work they’re doing, and to connect with fellow members around shared interests. Membership in NCDD is encouraged but not required for participation. Register today if you’d like to join us.

Contribute to the Youth Scholarship Fund for NCDD 2016!

Posted on September 1, 2016 by Roshan Bliss

The 2016 NCDD national conference on Bridging Our Divides is getting closer and closer, and we couldn’t be more excited! But there’s still a lot of work to do in the lead-up to this amazing event, and 1398790_744145238968706_3393677302500008784_o we need to ask for our NCDD community’s help with one important task!

As we recently announced, NCDD is offering scholarships to help make sure that young people, students, and others who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend the NCDD 2016 conference can join us. Before our 2014 conference, we received an incredible $10,000 anonymous donation to help ensure we had plenty of resources to offer scholarships to young people and low-income folks – but we can’t count on that kind of support this year.

That’s why we are calling on our amazing NCDD community to donate to our NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund to make sure that this year’s conference is brimming with the next generation of emerging D&D leaders. We are hoping to raise at least $10,000 for scholarships, if not more, by October 7th and we can’t do it without you! Whether you can give $5 or $500, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the Scholarship Fund today.

Your tax-deductible donation will go directly to helping us provide travel reimbursements, shared hotel rooms, and registration for scholarship hopefuls. Plus, anyone who donates $50 or more will have their contribution acknowledged in the printed conference guidebook!

The Importance of Young People Attending NCDD 2016

YoungPeopleAtNCDD2014 Our last NCDD conference in Reston, VA had more young people than any before it — a dynamic that was universally seen by the attendees as making the conference experience much more engaging and exciting. Ensuring that young people are involved in our conferences adds a great deal of fresh energy and perspectives to our field’s work, and it helps us diversify our field, spark new partnerships, bring in new volunteers and researchers, and foster mentoring relationships between emerging leaders and seasoned practitioners.

Additionally, NCDD recognizes that one of the important divides in our society that needs to be bridged is the divide between the younger generations and their elders whose are still in charge of the nation’s direction. That recognition is part of what animated our 2014 conference theme, Democracy for the Next Generation, and we continue to be committed to helping foster positive, collaborative relationships between older and younger people as a way to continue to strengthen our democracy. Being sure that younger folks are at the table for our conversation about about Bridging Our Divides is part of that ongoing commitment.

But maybe most importantly, engaging young people and students in our work helps us foster long-term resilience for the field of dialogue & deliberation. In coming years, we will continue to see many of the pillars and pioneers of the field exiting the work, and so it is critical for us to be making a conscious decision today to begin developing the D&D leaders and practitioners of tomorrow. Today’s younger generations will be charged with utilizing our methods to address some of society’s most pernicious issues and to bridge our most persistent divides, which is why it is so vital to ensure that we are intentionally investing in engaging and cultivating their leadership. They already have valuable insights and experiences that can help us forge new paths for our field, but we can’t tap into them if they aren’t with us!

That is why we feel it’s so important that we are successful in reaching our goal of $10,000 for the NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund, and why we urge you to make a contribution now.

How You Can Support This Effort

We at NCDD are putting our money where our mouth is with incentives for students and young people to attend NCDD 2016: we have reduced the registration rate to just $250 for students (a $200 discount!), and we are offering even lower group rates for teachers and other practitioners who are bringing groups of students from their youth-oriented programs! So we’re counting on our NCDD community to join us in helping make sure every young leader in our field is able to join us at the conference.

There are several other ways that you can support youth and student engagement during NCDD 2016:

Invite your friends and colleagues to support our scholarship drive and share this call for donations on social media using the buttons at the bottom of this post. Help us spread the word far and wide!
Become a sponsor of NCDD 2016! Donations from our field-leading sponsors help us make our great NCDD conferences possible, and you or your organization could become a champion of youth engagement by sponsoring the NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund. Learn more about being a sponsor at www.ncdd.org/sponsor.
Encourage the promising young people who you work with, bright students at your school, or other young people who might be interested in attending to register to join us at NCDD 2016! They can apply for a scholarship by clicking here.
Bring a group of young people or students to the conference yourself! The group rate is applied on a case-by-case basis, but at past conferences, a group that came with eight students received two free student spots on top of the cheaper student rate. The more youth you bring, the bigger the discount! Email NCDD’s Director Sandy Heierbacher at sandy@ncdd.org or our Conference Manager Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org for info about group discounts.
Recommend students or young people that we should reach out to! Send an email with their names and contact info to our Youth Engagement Coordinator Roshan Bliss at roshan@ncdd.org so he can invite them to come.
Encourage ALL the students you know to take advantage of NCDD’s Student Membership rate, which is only $30/year for full access to all of our great NCDD membership benefits.
At the conference, you can help the young people who are with us feel welcomed, valued, and engaged.
And of course, you can make a donation to the NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund by visiting at www.ncdd.org/donate. Or just use the form below!

Your tax-deductible donation will help us continue to cultivate the next generation of D&D leaders, and ensure the long term sustainability of our field. Won’t you contribute today?

Thank you for supporting NCDD’s efforts to engage our emerging leaders!

Contribute to our NCDD 2016 Scholarship Fund

Please complete the short form below to send in your donation. Be sure to put “Scholarship Fund” in the box where we ask if your donation is earmarked for a particular program!

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