What is Our Living Room?

In the summer of 2024, I traveled to Bath, Maine, to explore the efficacy of intergroup dialogue in combating increased polarization. There, I attended Seeds of Peace, a summer camp that invites students from the Middle East and South Asia to engage in fully immersive intergroup communication; I studied various dialogue strategies and methodologies and met like-minded peers from around the world. I also interviewed professors and scholars to add academic research and methodologies to my first-hand experiences. The project's ultimate goal is to develop a dialogue group at Ransom Everglades to bridge division and engage in important conversations.

Essential Questions: What values and strategies underlie intergroup communications that successfully promote empathy and open-mindedness? How can these teachings be applied to different learning environments and conflicts to promote constructive dialogue skills in young adulthood?

Our Living Room explores the tenets of successful intergroup communication amongst young people with drastically different - and even polarizing - identities and backgrounds. It employs two primary case studies in examining the values and strategies that cultivate more empathetic and open-minded communication amongst young adults: Seeds of Peace and university-level intergroup communications courses.

Seeds of Peace

Seeds of Peace, founded in 1993, is known for its widespread impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as border and religious strife in South Asia. The camp invites students from Israel, Palestine, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Jordan, the United States, and the United Kingdom to engage in daily “dialogue groups” as well as participate in summer camp activities with “the other side.” These dialogue groups are divided by region, with the American and British students split amongst the Middle Eastern and South Asian groups.

In July 2024, I spent two weeks at Seeds of Peace Camp in Maine. At camp, I not only participated in dialogue but explored the process of facilitating it.

College Courses

During the course of this project, I have consulted multiple professors at universities that made headlines this year for rampant polarization. With their help, I was able to further explore different methodologies in intergroup dialogue within the context of discourse on college campuses.

FAQs

  • “Dialogue is a specific form of facilitated group discussion in which vulnerable sharing and deep listening function to transform the participants and deepen their understanding of the world around them. Dialogue is a pedagogical tool that helps participants become conscious of the ways in which their varied experiences fit into larger systems, find their voice, listen empathetically and critically, navigate their interpersonal conflict, and feel empowered to address oppressive systems of power.” 

    - Seeds of Peace Facilitator Manual

    • Debate: Two or more sides arguing. Goal is to win.

    • Discussion: A respectful conversation sharing different opinions and viewpoints 

    • Dialogue: An facilitated discussion with vulnerability and active listening that allows participants to become conscious of their and other’s personal experience.

  • Our Living Room will culminate in implementation of dialogue at Ransom Everglades School. All of my research will support my transformation from dialogue participant to facilitator; I will host a dialogue at my school at train underclassmen to continue the project after my graduation