Category Archives: stories

Utah Citizen Summit: Bridging Divides After the Election

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For those eager to continue the conversation we began at NCDD 2016 about how to bridge our nation’s divides after the election, we encourage you to attend or tune in to the Utah Citizen Summit on Nov. 12th in Salt Lake City. The day-long event has been organized with the help of many NCDD members, and the centerpiece of the event, a conversation across partisan divides about the common good, will be livestreamed. You can learn more about the Summit in the announcement below from NCDD Sustaining Member John Steiner, or by clicking here.

An Invitation to Participate in a National Conversation

The national heart of the Utah Citizen Summit – to be held on Saturday, November 12th in Salt Lake City – is an afternoon, 90-minute dialogue, which will be facilitated by Mark Gerzon, with a leading Democrat, Republican, an Independent, and a major civic leader. The animating question will be: Now What? After this election how can we, as Americans, come together across our many divides to address challenging issues and to work for the common good?

We’ll be asking the following or similar questions of our participants:

  1. Now that the election is over, what are your hopes and dreams for Americans coming together?
  2. How might we learn to better live with our differences – with greater mutual respect and honor, with civility and compassion – in order to address challenging issues and to make progress for the common good?
  3. What first step might you (and your organization) be willing to take to help make this possible?

This conversation will be live streamed and recorded.

With the intention of recreating our public square – as Hannah Arendt once said, “Democracy needs a place to sit down” – we would like to catalyze similar conversations around our country after the election and before the inauguration. We’re reaching out to national organizations and networks with which we’ve been involved to see who might want to host similar dialogues in their communities, whether in living rooms, public libraries, at universities, etc.

The questions we’ll be asking can serve as a template or model. While we encourage local facilitators or Living Room Conversation hosts to follow this format, anyone can certainly create their own questions within the spirit of our session in Salt Lake City.

We have a website – www.utahcitizensummit.org – which is being enhanced so that dialogues can be registered and results reported, harvested, and shared with those involved.

Many thanks for considering participating,

John Steiner & the Utah Citizen Summit team

P.S.: Online collaboration resource

Our wonderful Salt Lake City colleague, John Kessler, who is largely responsible for the Utah Citizen Summit, is also offering the following as part of our national outreach process, for those communities who would like to participate in a more ongoing way:

One of the deeper purposes of the Utah Citizen Summit is for communities to be creative and emergent in becoming more civil, compassionate, inclusive, and collaborative in conversation, policy making, and action. In addition to connecting around the Utah Citizen Summit, we have an interactive web tool, which, on an ongoing basis, can provide a convening space for communities in an interactive, collaborative, online learning and practice environment. There exists the capacity to do this locally, nationally, and/or globally in an online environment, where communities and community based groups meet, connect, co-learn, and collaborate.

We have developed developed this resource in partnership with uBegin, a web based platform. Our civil network can now do this in a partnering way and invite other communities into this space. We’d like to make this available more broadly. Please let me know if you’re interested in exploring this option.

You can find more information on the Utah Citizen Summit at www.saltlakecivilnetwork.org/utah-citizen-summit.

Free Webinar on Making Participation Accessible, Oct. 27

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As you may have seen recently on our NCDD discussion listserv, NCDD members are invited to attend a free webinar this Thursday, Oct. 27 on how to make our processes more accessible. The webinar is being offered by MH Mediate, and will be a good opportunity for practitioners to continue to learn new tools for going beyond “the usual suspects” for participation in our events. You can learn more in MH Mediate’s announcement below or register here.

Become Accessible to a Wider Audience

Thursday, October 27th, 1-2pm Eastern / 10-11am Pacific

Accessible processes are equally appealing to people with diverse abilities and needs, including people with disabilities. After we explore a universal design framework for creating accessible dialogue processes, we’ll apply key accessibility principles to some examples. Finally we’ll discuss how to communicate your accessible practices to constituents and organizational partners.

Register free by clicking here or visiting https://goo.gl/sfv5Xy

E-mail dan@mhmediate.com if you have any questions or examples you’d like to cover during the presentation. You can also submit them when you register for the webinar.

About the Presenter
Dan Berstein is a mediator living with bipolar disorder and the founder of MH Mediate. He has hosted a variety of dialogue events, including the first New York City National Dialogue on Mental Health event which became a model for inclusive discussions around the country. Dan is an expert in accessibility, having trained practitioners across a dozen states. Dan’s workshops stress designing processes that work better for everyone while ensuring they work with people living with disabilities and other needs.

Celebrating What We Accomplished at NCDD 2016

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bumper_sticker_600pxWe 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-talkingNCDD 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!

NCDD 2016 Preview: Race, Police, & Reconciliation Stories

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With the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation less than two weeks away, we are continuing to preview the great content we have in store for conference attendees. It’s still not too late to register for this incredible event, but you should register today to save your spot! For those of you who still need more convincing, we want to highlight the powerful set of speakers we will feature during the NCDD 2016 opening plenary.bumper_sticker_600px

Bridging the Race & Community-Police Divides

One of the longest and most visible divides in our country today is the racial divide. Racial division and inequity have a long history in the US, and seem to perennially resurface in our communities and in our politics. In addition, the division between average people – especially people of color – and the police feels like it’s reaching crisis levels with the heightened tensions and conflict rising from seemingly weekly videos of new police violence against unarmed black and brown people combined with the killings of several police officers this summer.

It’s easy to feel hopeless and even afraid about these issues today, which is exactly why we in the dialogue field need to lifting up stories of how people are actively healing our race and community-police divides to show that there is in fact hope. We’ll begin our opening plenary by doing just that.

You can read a bit more about the three practitioners who will be sharing stories with us below, or just register for NCDD 2016 to come hear from them in person!

Our Speakers

Shelby Brown, Managing Director of Everyday Democracy
Shelby is currently the Managing Director at Everyday Democracy, which helps communities talk and work together to create communities that work for everyone. Prior to working at Everyday Democracy, Shelby ran an agency for the State of Connecticut and before that, she served in human resource leadership within the Board of Regents for Higher Education. Shelby has long been involved in community organizing, participatory democracy and racial justice.

We’ll hear from Shelby about how the work she and EvDem are doing is bridging racial divides in communities across the country.

india-geraldIndia L. Gerald, Program Supervisor at Roxbury’s Youth and Police in Partnerships
India serves as the Program Supervisor for Children’s Services of Roxbury’s Youth and Police in Partnerships program, which seeks to build trust and understanding between inner city residents and Boston police. For the past decade, she has worked to support vulnerable and at risk populations. India has extensive experience with Boston-based nonprofits, including Brookview House Inc., ABCD, Go Girl Go! Boston, Dimock and Women Connecting Affecting Change. In addition, to her experience she holds a Bachelors degree in Human Services and a Masters degree in Organizational Management and Leadership.

India will talk about her experiences working to empower young people in Boston to keep the gap between police and young people from growing wider.


Robert Daum, Ph.D., Board of Directors of Reconciliation Canada
Robert Daum is an educator, researcher/practitioner, and private consultant. He advises on and leads diversity and institutional change initiatives for universities, government, and not-for-profit organizations. Robert serves on the inaugural Board of Reconciliation Canada, which is leading the way in engaging Canadians in dialogue and transformative experiences that revitalize the relationships among Indigenous peoples and all Canadians.

Robert will share a few lessons about bridge building that we in the US can learn from his experiences with the powerful reconciliation work being done between Canada’s indigenous and non-indigenous communities.

You won’t want to miss out on hearing these powerful stories in our opening plenaries or the rest of this amazing conference, so make sure that you get registered to join us!

NCDD 2016 Preview: Our Philanthropist and Media Panels

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Our 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation is just around the corner – we couldn’t be more excited, and we hope you are too! It’s not too late to register for what is going to be an absolutely amazing gathering! As if you needed more reason beyond our incredible schedule and workshop session list, we also want to share a preview of the two great panel discussions we’ll feature during the plenaries to convince all those fence-sitters to register today!bumper_sticker_600px

Background on the Panels

During two of NCDD 2016 plenaries, we’ll be addressing two interconnected parts of what it takes to bridge our divides – stories and resources. Since 2002, the financial and media landscape of civic life has fundamentally changed to our work’s detriment. Funding on the Left and Right – but not the middle – has skyrocketed, and media spheres have become more siloed and divided than ever.

Money and media attention for the “problem-solving sector” – in which the NCDD network plays a pivotal role – has significantly diminished, despite continued growth and innovation in the sector. So at NCDD 2016, we are addressing these issues directly by providing spaces in the conference where we can take an in-depth look as a field at why so many of our initiatives underfunded and under-reported and how we can reverse this trend to create new momentum for our work. These spaces will take the form of interactive panel events on the topic of philanthropy and media.

Engaging Divides through Media Collaborations Panel

Our closing plenary will feature a conversation with representatives from the media who are engaging with society’s divides and the public in innovative ways. We’ll be hearing from journalists and other media representatives about the ways they are engaging with divided communities and divisive issues, discuss how we can increase the visibility of this kind of work, and learn from and envision new ways engagement practitioners and journalists can partner with one another. In short, our media colleagues will help us explore what’s happening now, what’s emerging for the future, and how we can work together to create innovative ways to bridge our divides and shift the toxic political discourse.

During this final plenary session, we will also ask the panelists to reflect on what they heard during the conference, what excites them, and what possibilities they see for lifting up or creating stories of those who are bridging our divides.

Our Panelists

Peggy Holman (moderator), Co-Founder of Journalism That Matters
Peggy is a nationally known author and consultant and is a recognized leader in deploying group processes that directly involve hundreds, or thousands, of people in organizations or communities in achieving breakthroughs. In 2001, Peggy co-founded Journalism That Matters (JTM) with three career journalists. JTM has built a national coalition of journalists, educators, reformers and others to support people who are reshapingthe emerging news and information ecosystem. 

Christa Case Bryant, Politics Editor for the Christian Science Monitor
Christa is The Christian Science Monitor’s new Politics editor. She comes to this post fresh off a 2015-16 stint as a Nieman fellow at Harvard, where she explored new models for digital journalism and audience engagement. Ms. Bryant previously served as the Monitor’s Jerusalem bureau chief.

 

Chris Faraone, Co-Founder of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism
Chris is an award-winning journalist (AAN, NENPA), a former Boston Phoenix Staff Writer, and the News + Features Editor of DigBoston, a co-founder of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, and an adjunct professor of communications at Salem State University. He has more than ten years of media experience, has published four books, and has written features for publications ranging from Columbia Journalism Review to Esquire.


Linda Miller, Director of Network Journalism & Inclusion, American Public Media Group
Linda Miller became a journalist in the small towns of Wyoming, where newspapers were pieced together with hot wax and border tape, and held together by trust, transparency, and a partnership with readers. At American Public Media, she is still helping journalists deepen relationships with the communities they serve, albeit with better technology. Miller runs the Public Insight Network (PIN), a nationally recognized platform for making the news media more relevant, relational, and inclusive.

Ellen Mayer, Community Manager, Hearken
Ellen Mayer became an early Hearken convert when she interned and reported stories for WBEZ’s Curious City. Now she’s excited to foster a collaborative network of public powered journalists as Hearken’s community manager. Previous hats include: digital outreach coordinator for social justice documentaries and producer for the music podcast Pitch.  Excited about: media diversity, One Direction, and Chicago rap.


dr-michelle-ferrier_2015Michelle Ferrier, Ph.D., E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, Ohio University
Michelle Ferrier is an associate professor in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. She is the president of Journalism that Matters and the founder of TrollBusters.com, a rescue service for women writers and journalists experiencing online harassment. She is the principal investigator for the Media Deserts Project that uses GIS technologies to examine places in the United States where fresh news and information are lacking.

Philanthropy Beyond Partisan Divides Panel

A frank exchange with funders and philanthropists is urgently needed. On the second day of the conference, our panelists and conference participants will focus on the financial constraints — and opportunities — facing our field. Panelists will share their experiences around funding “bridging the divides” projects and organizations, and share practical ideas about how leaders in this field can be more effective advocates for their work during conversations with funders. Meanwhile, conference participants will challenge panelists with their provocative, timely questions and commentary about the role that funders play in the development of the D&D field.

Our Panelists

Mark Gerzon (moderator), President of Mediators Foundation
Mark is an author, leadership expert, and veteran convener of cross-party conversations. His primary current focus is having a positive, transformative impact impact on the 2016 election. His newest book, The Reunited States of America: How We Can Bridge the Partisan Divide, shares the basic principles and profiles the leading figures in this movement.

Kahlil Byrd, Forward Progress in Politics
Kahlil Byrd’s expertise is building and leading large, disruptive technology based bipartisan reform organizations. He was president of the education reform effort StudentsFirst and cofounder and CEO of Americans Elect. His current firm, Forward Progress in Politics (FPPCO) is building a national bipartisan community of funders committed to essential and aggressive issue reform and political transformation. 

 

John Hardin, Charles Koch Foundation
 John is director of university relations at the Charles Koch Foundation, a charitable organization that supports hundreds of schools and scholars working to expand opportunities on campuses across the country. He manages relationships with partner universities, organizations, and donors to support programs that explore the ideas of a free society.

David Nevins, Bridge Alliance
David is President of the Bridge Alliance, an alliance of 43 organizations who have come together in civility, respect, and goodwill advocating “Country Before Party.” David is a Fellow at the Aspen Institute with a particular interest in supporting the Aspen Rodel Fellowship in Public Leadership, a program designed to support political leaders committed to sustaining the vision of a political system based on thoughtful and civil bipartisan dialogue. Additionally, Nevins has established and is involved with The Nevins Democracy Leaders program, a signature initiative within The McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State.

Leslie Pine, The Philanthropic Initiative
Leslie is Managing Partner at the Philanthropic Initiative (TPI) and has been the principal architect of their creative approach to program design and strategy, managing TPI’s program staff in the research, design, implementation, and evaluation of a wide range of innovative philanthropic strategies and initiatives. She has designed a range of philanthropic strategies including various youth development and mentoring initiatives; grants initiatives to stimulate innovation in K-12 schools and in community programs; corporate models to promote employee giving and community engagement; and initiatives designed to leverage grassroots community improvement efforts.

We can’t wait to be part of the discussion with these incredible journalists and philanthropists. And we know that you won’t either so be sure that you’ve registered today to join us in Boston later this month!

Learning from Feedback Frames: An Innovative Decision Making Tool

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Feedback+Frames+logoLong time NCDD member Jason Diceman is introducing an accessible new tool for public engagement this summer called Feedback Frames. His project is a great example of the innovation and creativity inherent in our network, and we thought the strategies he’s using to leverage social media, crowdfunding, and crowdspeaking platforms would be useful one for other NCDDers to learn from.

The love child of a polling station and a game of Connect Four, Feedback Frames offers a fun and flexible way to gather input from participants at large or small group events. Featuring private voting, built-in validation, flexible data-gathering, and quick visual results, this highly adaptable tool offers an elegant solution to group think and the bandwagon effect that can adversely affect any deliberation program.

Creator of Idea Rating Sheets, originally called Dotmocracy (featured at NCDD2006), Jason serves as Senior Public Consultation Coordinator for the City of Toronto. He has led public consultations for some of the City’s most controversial and high profile infrastructure studies, including downtown separated bike lane installations, the redesign of Front Street at Union Station, new roads and bridges in Liberty Village, contentious multi-use trails, and the Gardiner Expressway financing.

Jason is about to launch an Indiegogo campaign to support the manufacture of Feedback Frames, and he’s tapping into every modern tool and technique he can find to get the word out.  Having started with more traditional media (check out his humorous Prototype Video below), Jason has now turned to Thunderclap to make sure he can get his crowdfunding endeavor off on the right foot.

thunderclapThunderclap is especially useful for smaller programs which can’t effectively encourage the critical mass needed to benefit from the power of Twitter, or Facebook, or even the likes of Tumblr. Thunderclap is very much the “Kickstarter” of social media, but instead of pledging money a supporter pledges their social connections. When a project successfully hits its goal, Thunderclap will “blast out a timed Twitter, Facebook, or Tumblr post from all your supporters, creating a wave of attention.” Referred to as “Crowdspeaking” platforms, Thunderclap and its competitor, the more economical Headtalker, have been around a while and provide interesting companion services to crowdfunding projects. Both are interesting strategies that may be useful for helping NCDDers launch or promote their projects.

And Jason is facing the same problem all limited-budget social entrepreneurs face: how do you get the word out and make your great idea a reality without a second mortgage and an exclusive diet of ramen noodles? Of course, Jason could use all the “likes” and “upvotes” NCDDers can give him, so visit his project on Thunderclap at www.thunderclap.it/projects/39641-feedback-frames-are-coming if you’re interested in showing your support.

But even if you don’t support it, we encourage our members to take note of Jason’s strategy for getting this D&D project out there into the public eye. We think there are some good lessons from this kind of effort that can apply to all of our members.

Learn much more about Feedback Frames at www.feedbackframes.com.

Call for D&D Showcase Presenters at NCDD 2016

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NCDD is excited to announce that we’ll once again be holding our popular “D&D Showcase” during the 2016 National Conference on Dialogue & Deliberation, and we are looking for presenters!

yardsign_300pxThe D&D Showcase is a lively cocktail networking event that provides an opportunity for select individuals and organizations in our field to share some of the leading ideas, tools, projects, and initiatives in dialogue & deliberation with conference participants all in one space. It’s a fun way for conference-goers to meet some of the movers-and-shakers in D&D and hear about the projects, programs, and tools that are making waves in our work.

How the Showcase will work

Showcase presenters display simple “posters” about their work, tools, or projects and bring handouts and business cards to share with participants who are interested in learning more or following up. Showcase presenters will be ready to succinctly express what’s important for conference participants to know about their resource, method, research, program, etc. and to elaborate and answer any questions people may have.

During the 90-minute Showcase event, conference participants will stroll around the ballroom, chatting with presenters, and checking out their displays and picking up Showcase2014-2handouts. We’ll also have finger foods and beverages available as well as a cash bar, adding to the social atmosphere of the session.

The Showcase is a great chance to strike up conversations with leaders in the field and other conference participants who are strolling around the room, perusing the “wares.”

You can get a good sense of what the Showcase is like by watching this slideshow from our 2012 conference in Seattle.

You can also see Janette Hartz-Karp and Brian Sullivan presenting at the 2008 Showcase event here (back when we called it the “D&D Marketplace”), and check out the video of Noam Shore, Lucas Cioffi, and Wayne Burke presenting their online tools here.

Showcase2014-1Becoming a Showcase Presenter

The conference planning team is hard at work planning NCDD 2016, and one of our upcoming steps includes selecting people and organizations who are passionate about sharing tools and programs we know will interest our attendees as presenters during the Showcase. If you are interested in having your tool, project, idea, or work being featured in the Showcase, please email our conference manager Courtney Breese at courtney@ncdd.org and include: what it is you would like to showcase, a brief description of it, any links to where more information can be found, and any questions you have.

Please note that these slots are very competitive, and we will be favoring Showcase presentations that relate to the conference theme, Bridging Our Divides. So if your work, project, or tool focuses on helping people work across persistent divisions in our society, we definitely want to hear from you!

If you are selected as a D&D Showcase presenter, you’ll be expected to:

  • Register for NCDD 2016 and attend the conference.
  • Prepare a quick spiel or “elevator speech” about your Showcase topic that will get people interested in learning more. Practice it until it comes out naturally. We suggest you prepare several introductions of different lengths (30 seconds, 1 minute, etc.) so you can adjust quickly to different circumstances during the Showcase.
  • Showcase2014-4Prepare a simple, visually interesting poster and bring it with you to the conference.
  • Bring handouts about your program, method, online tool, publication, etc. that include further details.
  • Have any laptop-dependent pieces of your Showcase presentation finished, functional, and ready to share (you’ll need to bring your own computer).
  • Show up for the Showcase session about 20 minutes early so we have time to make sure everyone is set up and has everything they need.

You can find more information and advice for Showcase presenters on our Conference FAQ page here.

We are looking forward to having another informative and inspirational D&D Showcase this year, so we hope you’ll consider applying to be a presenter or urging your colleagues who are doing ground-breaking and critical work in the field to do so. We can’t wait to see all of the cutting-edge projects showcased in October!

New Initiative Experiments with Collective Healing Processes

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In the lead up to our NCDD 2016 conference, we continue to lift up stories of people who are Bridging Our Divides. So we wanted to share the piece below written by NCDD member Beth Tener of New Directions Collaborative about a great collective healing initiative she’s involved in that seeks to experiment with processes that will help large groups heal from old wounds that maintain separation. We encourage you to read her piece below or find the original here.

Collective Healing: Shifting Historical Patterns that Divide Us

We live in times of extreme partisanship, increasing divisions between the rich and poor, the working class and upper class, experiences of people of color vs. whites, and disconnects of people from nature. As the US Presidential election and the Brexit vote in the UK illustrate, our current political process tends to amplify divisions and generate more discord rather than greater understanding, stronger connections, and wise solutions balancing multiple needs.

When people are divided and disconnected, it is not surprising that there is a lack of empathy, curiosity, and care for the experiences and well being of people different than us. It can be easy to label people and disdain their views versus seeing them as individuals whose stories and struggles I understand and have talked to them about.

Finding new ways

It is time to find ways we can work together that overcome these patterns of division and separation. This is already happening in many places, perhaps at the edges and not that visible yet, but real nonetheless. Global communities of practice are inventing and evolving these processes (e.g., circle process, participatory processes, participatory budgeting, networks for system change.) While these experiments may seem at the edges when all the attention is focused on the mainstream political debate, they can hold seeds of a better way.

Over the last two years, I have been part of a rich dialogue with people who are exploring ways to bring people together that can help heal these long-standing harmful patterns. This group includes facilitators and others working with the Art of Hosting from Europe and the US. A gathering called Collective Healing will take place in Florida in August to experiment with bringing together various methods in a prototype, which we will learn and share more widely. We have focused on several key themes of what is needed:

  • Engaging across difference and connecting to “we” not just “me” – Getting beyond our narrow self interest to see ourselves as an inherent part of a larger group, community, society, and earth – and acting from that awareness – is not emphasized or easy to do. How can we facilitate groups in ways that generate a sense of belonging? How can we create group experiences that help us see those who are different not through the lens of a label but as full human beings with many stories, with complex emotions, and unique gifts and aspirations?
  • Reweaving the fragments of community with positive collective experiences – The pressures and pace of work these days means many are chronically rushed, super-busy, addicted, and distracted. Fulfilling human experiences of connection, belonging, friendship, creativity, meaningful work, and the opportunity to work with others on a bigger cause are sorely lacking. Changing these patterns starts with creating spaces for meaningful conversation about things that matter. Conversation is the “connective tissue” that can reconnect the fragmented parts.
  • Trauma: the overlooked pattern affecting everything – Yet, even with these promising ways to gather people and generate ideas of how we can make things better, this is not enough. Any initiative to look forward and make positive change takes place in a community or system that has a long history, which we often overlook. The fragmented relationships, broken bonds of community, and lack of trust did not arise out of nowhere. There is a story there. Events of the past created harms and burdens that are often unacknowledged. These unhealed traumas can still be affecting the situation and the people involved… and blocking the potential to shift to a healthier pattern/outcome. Promising processes are emerging to help communities or societies explore and work with history in ways that can enable healing, for example systemic constellation, restorative justice, and truth and reconciliation commissions.
  • Community and connection: healing together – One of the key ways to heal trauma is the experience of being truly heard and seen. When trauma is pushed under the rug, mental and emotional turmoil arises. Bessel van der Kolk writes “Denial of the consequences of trauma can wreak havoc with the social fabric of society.” What can we do to create a strong fabric of community while coming together and acknowledging the traumas? How can we generate a shared understanding and commitment to change so we do not repeat these harmful patterns?
  • Accessing overlooked human capacities – In much of the work world, there are unwritten rules of being professional and successful: use your intellect and leave your emotions at the door. We can access a broader range of human capacities, such as empathy and compassion, to understand the experiences and motivations of all those within a community and society. We are only beginning to explore how mindfulness and presence can help us understand past and present dynamics and make decisions. And there is more potential to explore weaving in arts, music, movement, and creative expression, which also tend to be left at the door. What could be possible in our collective work if we did not expect people to split off their emotional, intuitive, and creative sides to “be professional?” How might we make decisions if we access the power of “collective presence?”

There is a hunger for this…

In my work with non-profits, communities, businesses, governments, and foundations in social and environmental change, I have seen that: These practices work. There is a hunger for real conversation, for connecting to our larger community to achieve greater results together, and for contributing to making the world a better place.

It starts with an invitation…

We graciously invite you to join us for this first gathering in Florida, focused on how we can create spaces for collective healing: www.collectivehealing.net.

We anticipate this is just the beginning, with intention to host other gatherings in Europe and other parts of the US. At bottom of this page is place to sign onto mailing list for future events: www.collectivehealing.net/about.

And we welcome your financial support for this new initiative, in any amount, through our crowdfunding web site: www.indiegogo.com/projects/creating-collective-healing-spaces.

You can find the original version of this New Directions Collaborative blog post at www.ndcollaborative.com/collective-healing.

Featured D&D Story: Facilitating Dialogue Circles at the Mixed Remixed Festival

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Today we’re pleased to be featuring another example of dialogue and deliberation in action. This mini case study was submitted by Angelo John Lewis of Dialogue Circles via NCDD’s Dialogue Storytelling Tool. Do you have a dialogue story that our network could learn from? Add your dialogue story today!

ShareYourStory-sidebarimageTitle of Project:

Facilitating Dialogue Circles at the Mixed Remixed Festival

Description

Last June 10 and 11, I and four other facilitators participated in the annual Mixed Remixed Festival at the Japanese National Museum in Los Angeles. The festival bills itself as “the nation’s premiere cultural arts festival celebrating stories of the Mixed experience, multiracial and multicultural families and individuals through films, books, and performance.”

I and my colleagues saw our role as giving the festival participants and opportunity to share their stories in an audience of people whose experience was similar to their own. We did this by facilitating two dialogue circles and an additional workshop which gave participants an opportunity to write about and share their stories.

We were overwhelmed by the response! All told, about 125 people participated in our sessions and many said it was the first time they’d had an opportunity to reflect and freely share their experience of being biracial, bicultural, or other. The audience included people of mixed race heritage and people who were children or parents of mixed race kids. At the conclusion of our sessions, we challenged participants to declare the next step in their journey or what they planned to do differently after participating in the workshop. Some said they planned to organize similar discussions in their communities, while others said they’d now more freely proclaim their identity as “mixed” as opposed to a member of one cultural group; still others vowed to write about their experience.

Because the groups were so large, everyone didn’t get an opportunity to share their stories. We are now talking to the conference organizers to remedy this by offering teleconference dialogue sessions.

At the end of the day, our conference participation renewed our belief in the power of dialogue and our particular approach, which integrates personal storytelling.

Joining me were Roxanne Kymaani, Zachary Gabriel Green, Cindy Franklin, and S.Y. Bowman.

Which dialogue and deliberation approaches did you use or borrow heavily from?

Bohm Dialogue

What was your role in the project?

Primary facilitator

What issues did the project primarily address?

  • Interfaith conflict
  • Race and racism
  • Economic issues
  • Aging / elder issues
  • Youth issues

Lessons Learned

We learned several lessons:

  • The power of storytelling for breaking down barriers between people.  The focus on personal storytelling is a unique feature of the dialogue circle method and was particularly appropriate for this group.
  • Many people of mixed race heritage have insufficient opportunities to share their stories with others. They often feel that others expect them to choose ethnic or cultural sides despite their dual heritage and don’t truly feel comfortable when questions of identity are raised.
  • The importance of using large group dynamics in a setting when groups are particularly large. So while 15 or 20 participants would have been ideal, these particular groups were much larger. Therefore, we asked participants to raise their hands when they heard a speaker share something that mirrored their experience. This allowed for greater participation among our two groups, one of which was about 40 people and the other consisted of about 65.

Where to learn more about the project:

www.dialogue-circles.com

Checking In on the Nevins Democracy Leaders Program

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As part of our commitment to cultivating the next generation of leaders in dialogue & deliberation, NCDD launched a partnership last year with one of our member organizations, the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, to help recruit for their Nevins Democracy Leaders Program. The program matches D&D-trained college students with D&D and transpartisan organizations that host them for fully funded summer fellowships which help them gain skills and experience needed to continue on in the field. It’s a great deal for the students and their host orgs. We wanted to share a check in about how it’s going for one of the eleven 2016 Nevins Fellows, Ethan Paul, during his fellowship with the Close-Up Foundation – an NCDD member organization.
If you’re part of an organization that would like to host a Nevins Fellow, then save the date for our Confab Call with the McCourtney Institute on Sept. 21st at 12pm Eastern where we’ll be talking about how to get involved in the next round of fellowships. Until then, check out Ethan’s piece below or find the original McCourtney blog post here.

Report from Nevins Fellow Ethan Paul

Mccourtney Institute LogoThis Friday marked the end of my third week spent as a Nevins Fellow in Washington DC interning with the Close-Up Foundation. Close-Up is a civic-education organization dedicated to cultivating civic skills, values and culture in the minds of America’s youth. These include: an understanding of and appreciation for democracy; an ability to develop and communicate one’s own political positions; and an awareness and sympathy for political and philosophical differences.

For these first few weeks, I have been shadowing the program in real-time, quietly observing students from a diverse set of backgrounds and life experiences interact, debate, deliberate and discuss. I watched students consider the benefits and drawbacks of the differing visions of government championed by Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, and MLK Jr. I listened to a student-led debate over the future of American energy policy, the civic purpose of war memorials and the need for prison sentencing reform. I witnessed primarily Spanish-speaking students from Texas deliberate with Georgian students over immigration and the different role that drugs play in their respective countries.

While this work has technically been laborious, it has been a needed and rewarding respite from the disheartening nature of today’s political debate, in which grandstanding, posturing and partisanship is prioritized ahead of finding the common ground.  In a world which consistently promotes cynicism and doubt, these kids and this program have given me hope in the human condition and the prospects for a healthy political dialogue.

I believe that if every child were to experience the essence of this program – that is, if they had to the chance to sit down across from someone with whom they disagree politically, whether that be for cultural, geographical, educational, or economic reasons, and actually put in the effort to understand the principles and experiences which make-up that person’s political perspective – we would have a thriving and elastic democracy, one that was able to respond quickly and effectively to political emergencies or controversial topics that today would put it under considerable stress, such as immigration reform or the unsustainable accumulation of federal debt.

If I took anything away from these first few weeks, it is that schools, at all levels, should place a greater emphasis on not only the nuts and bolts of politics, but deliberation and communication itself. It will not matter how able the rising generation is at math or science if we have no ability to cooperate effectively with each other and put aside our differences; it will not matter how many engineers we have trained if the political system has not created an environment in which engineers have available to them the resources needed to successfully utilize that training. For this to ever become a reality, however, both parents and school administrators will need to find the courage to allow open and honest dialogue about our country.

I have come to believe, from my experiences at Close-Up, that if skills promoting political and social efficacy are developed effectively through dialogue, any person, regardless of background, will have the ability to unlock the universal nascent potential lying dormant within themselves to make a positive and lasting difference on our society. When this is done, our differences will not be an impediment to progress, but rather a vehicle for reaching it; diversity will no longer be bemoaned as a source of division, but rather a source of unity and solidarity.

Close-Up has opened me to this truth, and I plan on carrying it, and acting upon it, into wherever the future takes me.

You can find the original version of this McCourtney Institute blog post at http://democracyinstitute.la.psu.edu/blog/report-from-nevins-fellow-ethan-paul.