Creating a safe, inclusive and welcoming community takes understanding, openness and willingness to talk and listen to each other.
That’s why the City has worked with the Eastside Immigrant and Refugee Coalition (ERIC) and the Inclusion Network to create KirklandTalks. KirklandTalks is a dialogue model to facilitate conversations so that participants can talk, listen, and learn about cultural differences.
KirklandTalks is a self-contained dialogue kit(PDF, 1MB) that:
- supports inclusive participation in diverse groups
- can be used with a variety of question sets and topics
- is relatively simple to facilitate
The hope is to inspire individuals and groups to invite neighbors from diverse cultures to gather and, using the template and materials provided, create community conversations in a variety of venues.
The theme of the first dialogue model is “American” cultural identity and pluralism. A second theme on gun and community safety was developed and used during the summer of 2018.
The City hosted one training on “Hosting and Facilitating Inclusive Community Dialogues” earlier this year, and more trainings are currently being scheduled. While it is not necessary to attend a training in order to host a dialogue, the trainings include valuable information regarding the most important aspect of the dialogues—the invitation.
“American” Cultural Identity and Pluralism: