Navigating Difficult Conversations
Braver Angels is a civic renewal movement using workshops, debates, town hall meetings and community events to teach and demonstrate civil discourse across the partisan divide. They have shown that people who disagree politically can think and work together to address our nation’s most complex issues.
https://georgia.braverangels.org
Champion common-sense policy solutions in Congress by taking four easy steps:
- Identify Issues: Our members identify the most meaningful issues ripe for bipartisan action.
- Develop Briefs: Our staff develops a thorough policy brief on each issue.
- Weigh In: Each member reviews the brief and weighs in.
- Engage Congress: Staff shares the overall results and members share their own views.
The Constructive Dialogue Institute provides lessons and online training on how to lead conversations where people with different perspectives try to understand each other – without giving up their own beliefs – in order to work together.
Operating under an intersectional framework, DC Peace Team recognizes that peace, justice, and development are intrinsically linked. Supporting the cultivation of nonviolence in communities, this organization provides training in key nonviolent skills, facilitates restorative processes, deploys unarmed civilian protection units, and engages in advocacy.
The Carter Center has developed educational materials for an open-source, online media literacy curriculum — known as DIGIT — in partnership with Emory University. The video-based DIGIT curriculum educates adults about how to consume and share online information responsibly. The team has collaborated with various universities (Syracuse University, Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Emory University, the United States Air Force Academy, and community colleges) and aligned institutions and organizations, such as the National Association of Media Literacy Education, to test the curriculum and has plans to translate it into additional languages.
Through DIGIT, the team has worked to identify and mitigate online threats to democracy, including mis/disinformation, hate speech, online harassment, information operations, and dark political advertising.
To learn more click here.
Doha Debates believes the world will be a better place if we make room to listen to and understand all sides of an issue and seek consensus together. As divisions become more entrenched, individuals retreat into echo chambers and refuse to listen to a spectrum of perspectives. We believe that positive, meaningful change only happens when we build bridges along lines reaching a diversity of viewpoints. Resources from the Doha Debates include:
For more than three decades, EP has helped civic groups, faith communities, colleges, and workplaces foster resilience, cohesion, understanding, and trust. They do this in several ways: first, by training stakeholders in their trademark approach; second, through long-term collaborations designed to shift community or institutional cultures; third, by co-creating new proprietary programs and materials to disseminate; fourth, through remote consultation and coaching; and finally, by facilitating community dialogues surrounding divisive topics.
https://whatisessential.org/impact-stories/fostering-open-dialogue-evangelical-congregations
This resource offers a range of online trainings for individuals interested in leading conflict transformation efforts. ISCT’s goal is to study and promote the understanding of conflict processes and interventions from the transformative framework.
The HOPE guide is designed to help people across the United States counter political violence. It aims to empower individuals and strengthen communities to make political violence backfire against those who incite, threaten, and enact it through providing training and resources.
To learn more and read the 2024 guide, please click here.
Nonviolence365 makes Dr. King’s philosophy and strategies for nonviolence accessible in a flexible, immersive program for groups and individuals to embody nonviolence as a means of changemaking and creating communities of belonging. Centering love in thinking, speaking, and acting leads to personal, cultural, and societal transformation.
Living Room Conversations are a simple way to connect across divides – politics, age, gender, race, nationality, and more. This link provides scripts and frameworks for dialogues across a variety of differences and on a multitude of topics, including elections.
This organization brings together groups of Americans to unite around common values and to discuss shared visions for the future.
Million Peacemakers hosts workshops on transforming conflict into “Nonflict,” a three-step conflict resolution methodology. The organization trains communities and provides them with resources to bring peace. The “Nonflict Way” includes understanding the self and others, understanding our shared reality, and co-creating our ideal reality.
Through the Disagree Better Initiative of the National Governors Association, Governors across the United States are joining forces to reduce partisan animosity. This collective works to foster healthy debate and model a positive, optimistic way of working through policy problems than the hyper partisanship and polarization defining our country.
- CommonSense American: “Champion common-sense policy solutions in Congress by taking 4 easy steps. With over 53,000 members and broad political support we have the ability to make real change”
- Engaging Differences: “Join us on a journey to remind ourselves how to engage our differences more constructively – to see each other as human beings, not as competing political positions”
- GoldenRule2020.org: “Join faith communities to call for greater dignity and respect in politics”
- Next Generation: “Increase bipartisanship, collaboration, and civility in state government”
- NICD Research Network: “Learn from scholars about their findings on political and social discourse”
- Divided We Fall: “Experience other Americans grappling with bridging their divides”
Sacred Space Online Learning (SSOL) seeks to provide individuals with information about religious, spiritual, or faith-based online resources from a variety of sources. Sacred Space Online Learning does not claim ownership over the online courses or online offerings provided on this site.
http://www.sacredspaceonlinelearning.com/ssol-categories/peace-and-reconciliation-studies-pears/
This link includes numerous online courses and micro-courses on a wide variety of topics relating to peace and conflict resolution with a global focus. For example, Interfaith Conflict Resolution is designed to enhance the peacemaking capacities of individuals and faith-based organizations by focusing on objectives, methods, and best practices regarding interfaith dialogue.