by Veronica Schultz

When is the last time you suggested a contentious or bipartisan topic for discussion without fear of the conversation turning nasty or personal? No? too taboo for you? I would suggest you check out the Dialogue for Peace training.

Anyone is capable of facilitating a topic for fun, consideration, problem-solving, and for finding peace in a time of trouble. The one skill lacking in our modern society is to really hear others and their concerns or point of view. We so often post about ourselves, listen just to respond, and ignore the niggly stuff in life that we do not acknowledge them until they become a bone of contention and then we cannot deal with the idea of sitting in the same room with the opposing view and resolving it. Dialogues for Peace teaches not just a method of having the hard conversations but a way of life that incorporates this into your day-to-day interactions so that conversations happen long before they even become a problem.

By teaching this skill, we can pre-empt conflict and facilitate not just reconciliation but also true and agreed upon rehabilitation in societies that so desperately need it. In this training, I interacted with complete strangers, and having only ever met them over the internet, they are still strangers, and yet we have bonded and I could very easily go ahead and know that I could work with them going into the future. the ground rules we set as a group left us feeling safe and bonded.

People shared things that were laying heavy on their hearts and found acceptance rather than rejection or judgment and in return, their peers found knowledge and perspective. This experience was invaluable to us all. Our trainer was a star and our peers were engaging and brave and it wouldn't have worked without that magical cocktail.

If you want to invest in the future, forget Bitcoin😂, invest in people, invest in yourself, invest in Dialogue for Peace.