The Network for Peace through Dialogue is delighted to have the following people and organizations presenting sessions at our conference. For a complete schedule of events, click here.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

9:00 -10:30 AM CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Fateful Questions: The Power of Inquiry to Influence Dialogue

The Public Conversations Project has been helping people to prepare for constructive conversations about potentially divisive issues such as religion, the environment, abortion, human sexuality, and war for over 17 years. David Joseph, Program Director and Robert Stains, Vice President, will present two workshops at this conference. The first, “ Fateful Questions: The Power of Inquiry to Influence Dialogue,” is a two-part workshop which will examine the ways in which questions posed to a group or to individuals can have a profound shaping effect on subsequent conversations. Questions can convey assumptions, instructions, criticism or affirmation and elicit fear, interest, connection or aggression. This experiential workshop will introduce participants to an approach to inquiry that has been refined by the Public Conversations Project since 1989.

Dialogue Practices in Jewish-Palestinian Youth Peace Camps

Keren Hendin and Muna Aghawani, an Israeli and a Palestinian, have worked for several years in Jewish-Palestinian Peace Camps. In their session, they will share their experiences facilitating dialogue among youth at these camps. Participants will also take part in several model exercises, including one which involves mirroring and another which explores stereotypes.

How and Why Dialogue in a University-Based Setting?: Creating Dialogue Programs in Schools, Clubs, and Communities

The Dialogue Development Group (DDG), a student-led organization at American University in Washington, D.C., will engage participants in an interactive session on creating a dialogue program in a university or other community setting. DDG's roots in the International Peace and Conflict Resolution Program at American University, their vision, goals, and structure will be shared along with the challenges and successes they’ve experienced and the lessons they’ve learned. Panelists will include dialogue participants, and the session will be led by dialogue facilitators. Workshop participants will work in teams to identify resources and generate preliminary steps needed for creating a dialogue program in their chosen setting, such as a school, a church, a club, or community organization.

Online Intercultural Dialogue and Facilitation

Soliya is an organization which uses videoconferencing technology to facilitate online dialogue between U.S. and Middle Eastern college students. This session, led by Gabriel Koehler-Derrick, Program Officer and Reem Marto, Development and Outreach Officer, will focus on Soliya’s experience in leading online dialogue sessions. Since 2002, Soliya has been working with a wide range of university partners throughout the Middle East and the U.S. and has gained a great deal of experience in leading intercultural dialogue and facilitation trainings in an online environment. Soliya will provide a brief introduction to its mission and objectives as an organization committed to cross cultural online communication.  A discussion of lessons learned from their four years of work, best practice, organization and training will follow, along with comments from the Network for Peace through Dialogue’s online dialogue team, which can share its own experiences with more conventional online dialogue techniques. The session will end with questions from the audience.

The COEXIST Curriculum and Dialogue in Religious Peacemaking

The Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding will present its high school curriculum, COEXIST, which teaches students the components of conflict and conflict resolution skills through a case study of a Muslim and Christian in Nigeria who once used their respective religions to fuel war against each other, but now use them as resources for dialogue and reconciliation. The workshop will also share stories and findings from their book, Peacemakers in Action: Profiles of Religion in Conflict Resolution, which deals with religious peacemakers worldwide who lead their communities in effective dialogue and action amidst intractable sectarian conflicts. The session will be led by Sheherazade Jafari.

10:45 AM- 12:45 PM CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Fateful Questions: The Power of Inquiry to Influence Dialogue

The Public Conversations Project (Continued)

Listening as the Foundation of Dialogue

The Compassionate Listening Project teaches powerful skills for peacemaking in families, communities, on the job, and in social change work locally and globally. Their curriculum for Compassionate Listening grew out of many years of reconciliation work on the ground in Israel and Palestine. They have offered training programs since 1999, and their session at this conference will introduce attendees to Compassionate Listening, a model which emphasizes deep listening and mutual empathy as keys to lasting reconciliation and transformation. Through an experiential format, participants will learn to discern and listen to the essence of the other, suspend judgment, and speak from the heart while holding compassion for oneself and others. The workshop will teach skills necessary for bringing this technique into participants’ personal, interpersonal, and community lives.

Civic Engagement: Helping make the Connections Needed for Meaningful Dialogue

American Values Are, LLC was formed to promote nonpartisan dialogue on the values which shape democracy (e.g. accountability, tolerance, free speech, public education). These shared values serve as a platform for meaningful dialogue and the discovery of common ground, rather than partisan debate or apathy toward the political process. American Values Are has produced guides designed to facilitate dialogue about what it means to be a citizen, and to energize more Americans to be engaged in shaping and interacting with their own government. They also hope to be able to inform and educate people on how to engage in the dialogue that leads to common ground and minimizes partisan debate that divides and demoralizes us. They hope to encourage individuals to exchange ideas, thoughts, and concerns in a safe and comfortable environment, and by so doing build new relationships. Using their "American Values Are…" dialogue guides, their presentation will demonstrate the role of informed dialogue in encouraging civic engagement.

Empathic Conversations:
Models from Kenya and the U.S.

The Women's Peace Circle, comprised of Sally Simmel, MA, President of the North American Retreat Directors Association, Prudence Moylan, PhD, Professor of History, Loyola University, Chicago, and Virginia Hoffman, PhD, LMFT, Licensed Therapist and Writer, will share its experiences working with the Rural Women's Peace Link, Kenya (RWPL). A network of grassroots women’s organizations in areas affected by armed conflict in Kenya, RWPL came together to address a local conflict made more violent by globalization (guns, environmental changes, and increased violence against women).  The women involved worked to understand the needs of both sides, devise solutions that would honor all needs and concerns, and establish patterns and practices that continue to foster dialogue. This session will present the work of the Rural Women’s Peace Link in Kenya as a visual model and focal point, to explore the process and uses of dialogue, and to make connections with our own experiences. The Women's Peace Circle will share its own story of growth and address the use of empathic conversation to transform conflictual relationships into sustainable communities able to solve problems. There will be an opportunity for participants to work on the principles of empathic dialogue for future application.

Sustained Dialogue: “It’s not just talk . . . it’s a social movement”

The International Institute for Sustained Dialogue has its roots in 1999, when a group of students began using a unique process called Sustained Dialogue to proactively improve race relations on college campuses. A network of Sustained Dialogue practitioners has since formed, connecting students at over a dozen colleges, universities, and high schools. The Sustained Dialogue Campus Network (SDCN) represents a budding social movement of passionate students, deeply engaged in changing the dynamics of their communities.  This workshop will teach the theory behind Sustained Dialogue, and how to create a safe space to address divisive issues, like race relations, that are often taboo in social settings. In this space, participants learn from one another and are changed by the experiences they share so that they truly can begin to understand the problems that face their communities and what power they have, as a group of individuals, to address them.

The session will be led by Tessa Garcia and Christina Kelleher, the Program Directors for the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network, responsible for training student moderators and developing Sustained Dialogue programs at colleges and high schools across the country.

2:30 - 4:30 PM CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Cultivating Readiness: Preparing Participants for Constructive Conversations

The Public Conversations Project's second session, “ Cultivating Readiness: Preparing Participants for Constructive Conversations” will examine the p reliminary work that makes constructive conversations possible among people locked in contention. This session will focus on the vital role that pre-meeting contact plays in influencing the course of conversations. Participants will gain practical experience with personal and procedural approaches that support constructive participation.

A Living Room Dialogue: Migration

The Network for Peace through Dialogue (NPD) is a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting grassroots communities, both locally and globally, in order to identify and research common issues and solutions in the areas of making peace and promoting just action. Its objective is to provide a platform so that communities and societies can expand understanding and discuss their differences within a dynamic environment to help resolve conflicts and cooperate more fully. In all its programs, NPD does this by analyzing, facilitating, and fostering dialogue, identifying solutions, and sharing information. One of NPD’s oldest and most popular community programs is the living room dialogue; this workshop will allow attendees to participate in a living room dialogue and simultaneously learn how to host a similar dialogue in their own community. The living room dialogue technique is one that NPD developed and implemented in 1994 as a means for neighbors to spend an evening in dialogue about a current issue of critical interest. After demonstrating the methodology, this session will conclude with a 15 minute discussion of the technique. Participants will engage in a living room dialogue about the world-wide phenomenon of migration. This builds on an ongoing six-month online and face-to-face dialogue sponsored by NPD about this issue.

The Peace Story Quilt: Dialogue and Unity through the Power of Art

The InterRelations Collaborative is an educational organization which uses the power of art to build and celebrate bridges of understanding among rapidly diversifying student populations across New York City. Part of the InterRelations Collaborative's post-9/11 peace making initiative, which was introduced in response to a rise in violence and intolerance following tragic events of September 11, 2001, is the Peace Story Quilt, which was created by New York City youth in collaboration with celebrated visual artist Faith Ringgold. For this session, the InterRelations Collaborative will display and present the Peace Story Quilt. The session will feature a panel discussion with some of the youth artists who helped create the Peace Quilt, as well as parents and some of the staff members who assisted in the project.

Speaking Across Differences- Creating Space for Difficult Conversations: Transformative Dialogue with Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims, Jews, and Christians

The Dialogue Project, based in Brooklyn, New York, is a neighbor-to-neighbor community development program which creates bonds between neighbors of different backgrounds through dialogue. For their session, a panel will present transformative dialogue techniques now being practiced throughout the greater New York metropolitan region in ongoing sustainable dialogue circles among Diaspora Palestinians, Israelis, Jewish, Muslim and Christian Americans. Participants will engage in exercises/dialogue that will demonstrate how trust, relationships and partnerships are established when differences surface. They will explore hot words such as jihad, security, Zionism, terrorism, and examine how active/generous listening and reflection are tools that allow us to create a safe, confidential space where these difficult conversations can take place. They will also examine how trust and affection can grow when very different worldviews and personal connections to conflict exist among people.

The panelists will describe their experiences with personal stories and the exchanging of different narratives and perspectives in face-to-face encounters. Panelists will include: Father Khader El-Yateem, Palestinian American Christian; Linda Sarsour, Palestinian Muslim American; Sarah Sayeed, Muslim American; Eddy Ehrlich, Jewish American; and Yehuda Ehrlichman, Israeli American. Paula Pace, an Associate of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and a member of the Board of Directors of the National Executive Service Corps, and Marcia Kannry, dialogue facilitator and Founder of The Dialogue Project, will facilitate the session.

Which Method Should I Use?: Navigating the Continuum of Dialogue and Deliberation

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation (NCDD) provides resources, programs, and networking opportunities for a rapidly growing community of practice dedicated to solving group and societal problems through honest talk, quality thinking, and collaborative action. The “dialogue and deliberation community” is a loose-knit community of practitioners, researchers, activists, artists, students, and others who are committed to giving people a voice and making sure that voice counts. NCDD has nearly 700 members and holds biennial national conferences.

The NCCD session, titled “Which Method Should I Use?: Navigating the Continuum of Dialogue and Deliberation” addresses some of the following questions: What do methods like Sustained Dialogue, National Issues Forums, Study Circles, and Conversation Café have in common, and how are they distinct? How in the world do we decide which method to use? Session participants will explore the spectrum of dialogic and deliberative practice and where dozens of leading methods land on the continuum. Utilizing mini case studies and an innovative new tool designed collaboratively by the NCDD community, participants will learn about the variety of models that are available to them and how to decide which method is right for their circumstances.