Dialogues

Using a distinctive methodology for honest conversation, HIC creates safe spaces where people from diverse and/or polarized factions come together to wrestle with the realities of their divisions and find steps toward collaboration and respect. This effective model has been used to design various dialogues for faith communities, non-profits, the private sector, and government. The curricula includes metropolitan dialogues on race, economics, and jurisdiction, relations between Muslims and Evangelical Christians, and issues of public education.

Community Response Team

HIC has an expert group of facilitators who are available to respond to community tensions and crises and requests for dialogues and training. These interventions are designed to fit the specific need of your group or organization.

Training

HIC offers a variety of Community Trustbuilding Programs that promote an integrated approach to constructive change. They increase the capacity of communities to overcome divisions of race, culture, economics, and politics by creating a network of trustbuilders.

These programs offer participants opportunities to:

• Participate in and facilitate honest conversation.
• Examine how acknowledgment of painful history can be a tool for reconciliation.
• Learn how to engage “hard to reach” sectors and build diverse teams and networks.

Walking Through History

This physical walk that begins at Manchester Docks on the James River has at its core the concept of Sacred Stories and is a model for an accurate, respectful, inclusive, public, telling of the story. It establishes an agenda for healing by:

• Allowing the conscience of large numbers of people to be mobilized.
• Liberating all parties by breaking the cycle of guilt, avoidance, and resentment.
• Enabling people of different backgrounds to take ownership of shared history.

Public Events

HIC offers conferences, seminars, and forums open to the entire Richmond region with the purpose of challenging the community to wrestle with difficult issues. Events such as Metropolitan Richmond Day bring in national practitioners and local experts to help the community find collaborative approaches.

Healthy Integrated Public Schools

HIC is working to forge a new level of collaboration among students, educators, parents, employers, and community organizations, within and across the schools and school districts. HIC helps the community ask "If every child were my child ... " how would we answer the following questions:

• What choices are we making to provide the best development for our children?
• What factors are influencing our choices?
• How do divisions of race, economics, and jurisdiction impact our children and the future of metropolitan Richmond?