Invitation to participate in AmericaSpeaks’ new paired dialogue project
I wanted to share some information about a new project AmericaSpeaks (one of NCDD’s founding members) is doing in conjunction with Face the Facts, USA. During March and April they are taking advantage of the publicity surrounding the budget stalemate in Washington and promoting the need for “nonpartisan dialogue instead of partisan debate.”
AmericaSpeaks will be working to help change the conversation on budget issues by getting people around the country to have paired conversations with those who have somewhat different political views.
This involves getting people to take a survey of their views and attitudes towards the federal budget (there are two different surveys available online) and then spending half an hour or so in a paired conversation with someone with a different perspective. Click here for more info on how the process works and how you can participate.
AmericaSpeaks suggests that facilitators who want to promote these paired conversations can reach out to people in their community in a variety of ways. They can ask someone to have a conversation with them, offer to facilitate a dialogue between two well known people of different views or just encourage two people they know to set a time to do one of the surveys and talk about it.
In order to support local facilitators who want to participate, AmericaSpeaks has some funds available and can provide $100 to the first 50 facilitators who generate at least five paired conversations. If you are interested in getting this stipend, then go to this link http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5874/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=59996 to sign up.
I hope you will take time to learn about this effort and then to participate if it is of interest to you. If you need more information, feel free to contact Theo Brown at AmericaSpeaks (tbrown@americaspeaks.org).
