WHO: You! And your friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues!

WHEN: October 22, 5:30-7:30 PM; Social Time, 5:30pm,  Program starts at 6:00PM

WHERE: Crawford Hall, Drew University

WHAT: The Science & Practice of Building Community Across Our Differences: A 1-hour, highly interactive and engaging program to learn, practice, and put into immediate use tools proven to create goodwill across differences with family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and strangers, alike. These skills are universal and shown to reduce political polarization. We’ll highlight local community programs that bring people together, and how you can join them. We are bringing our community, workplaces, and families together, while having fun! Perfect for the holidays!

Co-produced by Drew University Center on Religion, Culture and Conflict and Courageous Leadership and designed specifically for our local community, you’ll experience the camaraderie and connection with students, faculty, local partners and leaders. You’ll engage directly with the 93% of Americans who want less divisive talk and more positive action on local issues of shared concern. Past participants report an overwhelming increase in a sense of belonging in their communities and in our country at large. Participants emerge more:

• hopeful and inspired,

• capable of creating goodwill and engaging across differences, and

• interested in building relationships and working together.

Bring Friends, Families, Neighbors, and Colleagues!

WHY COURAGEOUS COMMUNITY-BUILDING?

When people from many backgrounds and perspectives come together in shared efforts, they build bonds while achieving results. This Courageous Community-Building event combines Drew Action Scholars “real-world problem-solving” model with Courageous Leadership’s proven methods. Our programs are built on solid science, and have helped people increase social and emotional intelligence and build trust with each other and our society. Our evidence-based tools have been used by Salesforce, Microsoft, Pfizer, Hewlett Foundation, Google, Center for Domestic Peace, Columbia University Medical Center, GE, and more. This TEDx Talk provides a glimpse.

Every great team, community, family, and country faces conflict when differing ideas and perspectives collide. But instead of shying away, we can invite “Courageous Community-Building," and turn fear into excitement, curiosity, and positive impact.

DEMONSTRATED IMPACT

Third-party research by Jonathan Haidt’s Civil Politics, showed a previous “Courageous Community-Building” program yielded some of the highest results of any of the many “bridging divides” programs they had evaluated, with statistically significant increases in:

• A sense of belonging

• Willingness to work across differences to achieve common goals, and

• Motivation to bridge differences.

An internal evaluation of one community programs showed that:

• 94% of participants want to continue these sessions

• 92% learned important information, and

• 86% will behave differently in the future because of the training.