Intergroup Dialogue Facilitator Development

Presenter: Harshini Parandapalli, Neurobiology and Physiology, Global Public Health Scholars

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For my practicum, I took a class about Intergroup Dialogue Facilitation or WEID300. The framework of this class is a 7 week classroom style class to learn techniques in order to facilitate intergroup dialogue surrounding controversial societal topics and issues. For the next 4-7 weeks, we facilitate/lead a class and apply the skills we learned in class to be a facilitator for a dialogue with a group of students. For the last 4 weeks of the course, I co-facilitated a scholars class for the Environment, Technology, and Economy scholars on a topic surrounding racial relations to food systems in the United States. The purpose of this course was to come to a consensus on a solution to improve food systems in the United States and I facilitate discussion surrounding race, gender, and its connection to the student’s personal connections and experiences to food systems. I learned how to facilitate intergroup dialogue and skills to create an effective dialogue among students. Other technical skills I had the opportunity to learn and improve were a leadership approach, group processes and dynamics, social identity development, power and oppression dynamics, and solidarity building. In the class I facilitated, I also refined skills around active listening, asking open-ended questions, encouraging respectful dialogue, challenging assumptions and biases, and learning to create a collaborative environment and brave space. Intergroup dialogue facilitation has countless connections and implications for public health. Systemic change starts with education. By groups of students learning about power and oppression by listening to lived experiences from others, we are able to use the knowledge we gain to better our society. Through dialogue, health issues are also understood and the steps to improve or resolve conflicts are learned. Lived experiences are

brought to light and personalizes public health rather than overall world disparities. Future leaders in the world should be well versed on health and societal issues in race, gender, class disparities, and countless other aspects which starts with intergroup dialogue.