global exchanges

We've spent eleven years creating international alliances

with colleagues who are eager to support and extend the power and potential of facilitated dialogue.

These partnerships demonstrate that international dialogues are the future of true public diplomacy.

In the 2021-2022 academic year,more than 1,000 individuals from our partnering sites joined facilitated dialogues with more than 1,500 Penn State students

the Dialogues

Global dialogues matter because they allow people to be seen on their own terms rather than through the lens of news headlines or social media quips.

As participants talk across borders in real time with a trained facilitator, they come to realize how little they truly know about each other. Even when they think they are informed, participants leave most dialogues realizing that they have little sense for what it is like to live in Afghanistan or Russia or Israel—or the United States.

After a dialogue, one participant who was a military veteran that had spent an entire year in Afghanistan said, “I learned more about Afghans in this one dialogue than I learned in the entire time I was deployed.” 

Each encounter has a way of exposing cultural assumptions that need to be explored. The dialogue exchange is what allows individuals from "both sides" of any national border to explore the veracity of their assumptions and to broaden their knowledge and curiosity as a result.

the partnerships

In 2010, we had no idea what it would take to host online global dialogues. Fast forward to 2022, and we have staff who are in constant communication with global partners, operations and logistics interns present for every dialogue—arriving even before the first participants meet to make sure things run smoothly—and dedicated coordinators in each country.

Further, we work with our international colleagues regularly to tailor the conversations to their worlds as much as to our own.

International and cross-cultural collaborations require that our dialogue method is robust enough to serve people and communities with needs, interests, and risk factors that may be vastly different from one another and from us. That is why we must have honest working relationships in order to make that intention a reality every day. And that is why we are committed to upholding responsive systems and operational consistency.

The facilitation

Facilitators learn to use a method that activates multiple perspectives, which allows for the dialogue to focus on more than just the “two-sidedness” of views that otherwise often dominate international encounters. Facilitators learn ways to complicate binaries and to question “us and them” mindsets and to clarify cultural expressions that get lost in translation. For example, someone in Bogotá may not know what “I’m right outside Philly” means. And someone “right outside Philly” often doesn’t know what “I’m heading to Iftar after this” means. With the help of facilitators, meaningful, un-stereotyped exchanges are possible between complete strangers from different lands.

Our longest standing partnership is with our colleagues in Afghanistan, and over the past six years, we have seen five Afghan partners deepen their understanding of facilitation and take on a variety of roles required to support these exchanges. In the spring of 2019, a small number of university students in Iraq were selected to participate in facilitator training. By the end of the semester, four were ready to try their hand at co-facilitating. And since partnering with individuals in Colombia in 2018, two facilitators have emerged as important presences there.

In the fall of 2020, our first team of students from international sites participated fully in our Foundational Theory and Practice in Small Group Facilitation—and were able to co-facilitate with Penn State students.

To partner with us, learn more, or inquire about any of these opportunities: