Basic Transformative Dialogue Training: Who Needs to Talk to Whom about What and How?

Basic Transformative Dialogue Training: Who Needs to Talk to Whom about What and How?

Supporting self-determination and connection in dialogue - An asynchronous training with an orientation in March and then three live check in sessions over March-May, 2024.

This training provides participants with the basic understanding and skills to support people in communities and organizations in having meaningful and constructive conversations across differences; conversations that help change the quality of their interactions whether or not they agree at the end of the process.   

Participants will:

• Learn how the transformative understanding of conflict applies to group and community conflict
• Gain a relational understanding of identity, race, ethnicity, culture and power, and learn how transformative facilitators respond to these differences
• Understand how transformative dialogue is consistent with trauma-informed practice
• Learn to organize a participant-driven dialogue process through one-on-one and small group meetings and conversations with community members
• Learn the goals, roles and core skills of a transformative facilitator
• Learn techniques for facilitating open conversations and options for structuring interactions transformatively that allow even very large groups to share ideas and make decisions

About the course’s organization: 

This training consists of asynchronous material which will be available from March 1 through June of 2024! Participants will watch videos containing the course content and be asked to reflect on and apply the content. The videos are all newly produced and include a range of different practitioners working in a diversity of contexts and situations. All material is stored in a Google Classroom (GC).  An invite to join the GC will be sent out the last week of February. Participants can access the materials there, as well as ask questions, share thoughts, and have conversation with other participants. 

There will be a 60 minute orientation and then three 90 minute live sessions planned over the course of the 3 months. These sessions will include time for questions and discussion that will allow participants’ to further engage with the content, learn and practice core skills and consider the best ways to put what they’re learning to use.

These sessions will  take place via Zoom on the following dates. If you can't make it, they will be recorded and shared with the group:

Orientation: March 4, 1- 2 pm Eastern

April Check-in: April 8, 1-2:30 pm Eastern

May Check-in: May 6, 1-2:30 pm Eastern

June Check-in: June 7, 1-2:30 pm Eastern

Who the course is for:

This course is ideally for those who may have more experience with transformative mediation or self-managed conflict. This training is a significant revision of earlier trainings in transformative dialogue, so even if you have taken an earlier training there is much to learn here. New elements include expanded premises on identity and people in groups, incorporation of trauma-informed practice into the training, and centering discussions of race, culture and power in the training. Whether you are interested in organizing and facilitating conversations in your local community, or in your workplace or organization you belong to, or you are working in an area of ethnopolitical conflict, this training will be an excellent starting point for this work.

To apply for a scholarship, fill out this form:  https://forms.gle/t6qrTVVQ65r1z2Qt5