My third workshop was Transforming Conflict Into Action, something that is also very important in my neighborhood. There are a lot of groups that butt-heads over a variety of issues and this workshop focused on providing us with tools to use effective listening in order to resolve conflict and keep it from resulting in stagnation of a group’s goals. We did several role-playing activities designed to help us empathize with people typically viewed as the problem in a group. By doing this we gained valuable perspective and hopefully when we’re engaged in conflict in the future, we’ll be able to disarm and communicate. An effective method for building strong non-conflicting bonds between conflicting groups is to engage in listening projects. That is, only listen, [don’t provide opinions!] to what the person is saying and through effective discernment, the true issues can often be teased out.