Category: NeighborWorks

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.