Georgia College Courageous Conversations
Each year, throughout the month of February, the President's Commission on Diversity invites faculty, staff and students to take part in a series of open and honest dialogues focusing on the themes of Differences and Diversity. Auxiliary Services is generously donating a limited number of lunch vouchers for those who wish to have their conversations in The MAX Dining Hall.
We hope that you will come up with interesting insights during your discussion, so we will provide you with relevant topics to help break the ice and get things started.
To sign up, please fill out this form. Please suggest someone from a different background that you would like to invite for a conversation or we will match you based on your preferred topic of race/ethnicity, LGBTQ, gender and religion/spirituality.
Benefits to Participants:
- Explore some of the messages you have received about your own culture and the culture of others
- Raise awareness of the individual and collective experience
- Develop a better understanding of ourselves, as cultural beings, in a social context that allows us to move from personal experiences to considering multiple viewpoints
Conversations around differences have helped many participants in the long run to:
- Honestly listen and begin to validate the diverse experience of others
- Acknowledge the individual, cultural, and institutional discrimination that exists in our community
- Develop strategies for changing personal and institutional behaviors that perpetuate discrimination in all of its forms
- Build a stronger commitment to a community that appreciates and takes full advantage of its diversity
Resources
http://www.publicconversations.org
http://www.tolerance.org/news/article_tol.jsp?id=1092
http://www.studycircles.org/en/Issue.6.aspx
http://www.conversationcafe.org/
