Photo: People in an EP dialogue
Renew hope where you live, work, worship, and learn

We give people the means to strengthen relationships, deepen belonging, and renew hope in their communities.

  • Photo: Louise O’Kane, Community Places, Northern Ireland

    [Essential Partners’] technique is used to explore contentious or divisive issues. So looking at renewable energy we thought this was an ideal opportunity to explore all the complexities of that issue. I found it a really useful method, and although this is the first time we’ve used it I am sure we’ll be using it again.

    Louise O’Kane, Community Places
    Northern Ireland, UK
  • I am now open to new views and can moderate my impulse to debate or persuade others of different views

    Program Participant
    Montana
  • While mediators are taught to find common ground and commonalities, Essential Partners teaches how to engage differences constructively instead of trying to homogenize. Knowing how to approach people who are different than you and understand their complexities is a really useful tool.

    Jasmyn Samaroo, Brown University Mediation Project
    Brown University, RI

Resisting Polarization in an Election Season: A Free Resource

Partisan polarization (Democrats versus Republicans) turns our huge, complicated, diverse democracy into a political sport where everyone has to pick a side and only one side can win. In this four-part, scaffolded, self-paced curriculum, we will help you develop the internal capacities, skills, and confidence you need to become a positive force in conversations around the election where you live, work, worship, and learn.

Photo: Diverse group of people standing in line with an American flag displayed behind them
Image: Scaling Dialogue Graphic

News: How Essential Partners is Taking Dialogue to Scale

“Rather than bringing people out and then have them go back into a dysfunctional system, we're working to change that system from the beginning. And it's a very, very grassroots approach.” 

EP Co-Executive Director Katie Hyten talks to Beyond Intractability about our theory of change, scaling our impact, the power of student facilitators, our Reflective Structured Dialogue approach—even our name change, from Public Conversations Project to Essential Partners!

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