Essential Partners makes decades of expertise in dialogue across differences available to the public

Last year, millions of people around the globe were moved to demonstrate in the name of racial justice. They marched and organized despite the risk of illness and physical harm. Inspired by their commitment and courage, Essential Partners (EP), an international leader in dialogue across differences, has published Race in America: A Dialogue Guide.

This comprehensive guide will help people engage in open, courageous, healthy conversations about race in their community. EP’s trademark approach, Reflective Structured Dialogue, has been proven to help people build trust, understanding, and relationships across differences of identity, values, and beliefs.

“If we want to live in an inclusive, open, democratic society, we need to be able to talk about race with honesty and dignity,” said Katie Hyten, co-Executive Director of Essential Partners. “When we share our stories, reflect on our experiences, and complicate our understandings of one another, it makes new relationships, new ways of living together, and genuinely transformative solutions possible. We need to have the capacity to navigate differences of racial identity in every space we inhabit, in our houses of worship, our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our classrooms.”

Over thirty years, Essential Partners has collaborated with community groups, schools, faith institutions, nonprofits, foundations, and organizations across the United States to make new conversations about race possible. Recent projects include:

• Dialogues between police and Black community members in Raleigh, NC
• Community engagements about faith, race, and ethnicity in Columbia, MD
• Dialogues among BIPOC educators about the strains of COVID and racism
• Student-led dialogues about race at a secondary school in Cary, NC

Drawn from real-world collaborations like these, EP’s new guide provides three dialogue models: one for a group composed of participants who identify as Black, Indigenous, and/or people of color (BIPOC), one for an all-white group, and one for an inter-racial group. The Guide contains an introduction to EP’s theory and approach, step-by-step instructions, a complete facilitator script, and expert tips for new facilitators.

Race in America: A Dialogue Guide can now be downloaded for free at the Essential Partners website.

Founded in 1989, Essential Partners is a 501c3 nonprofit that equips people to live and work better together in community by building trust and understanding across differences. Envisioning a world of thriving communities strengthened by difference and connected by trust, EP advances its mission through trainings, long-term partnerships, thought leadership, and free public programming.