What We Do

If we are going to solve the most difficult problems facing our world, people will need to learn to work together. But given the forces tearing us apart, we need practical tools to help us learn how to collaborate in productive ways. The Collaborative Discussion Toolkit is an easy-to-use guide filled with civic prompts and practical activities for educators looking to develop facilitative leaders and change agents.

I loved the CDP Coach Training. Honest, I came in skeptical as so much in this space is not particularly useful. People like to get together to talk; the critical factor is do they leave able to use what they learned in their own life? I was thrilled to find that the CDP coach training focuses fully on how people can apply it in their own lives and work.

Even with people who might be on the other side of the political spectrum, or see an issue differently from us, [these online Community Conversations] help us find the underlying truth. I think we need more conversations where we realize how much more we have in common than different, but also integrating our differences well to actually work together. That template was really helpful through the discussion agreements, and also just general the discussion itself, it’s super stimulating. I think [a fellow participant] had said that it provided more questions than answers and I really enjoyed that as well because it helps us see the complexity of the topic, but also moves us in a direction where, you know, we see progress and solutions to problems.

Ballotpedia is proud to partner with the Interactivity Foundation. Together, we’ve been able to provide voters in Des Moines and Chicago with candidate information they need to feel confident about their decisions at the polls. The Interactivity Foundation’s ability to engage citizens in substantive public policy discussions is best-in-class.

In 2016, we partnered with the Interactivity Foundation to train 42 citizens to facilitate community conversations, produce a video about our work and expand the scope of our public discussions. This support was just what we needed and when we needed it – and way beyond our means. The professional services Interactivity Foundation provided us were a great value-add to our team and definitely accelerated our work. Thank you!

The work I now do with farmers in the remote mountain regions of Haiti crystallized from IF’s citizen-based discussion methods, as did the photography-based literacy tools now being implemented in resiliency programs with at-risk elementary school children in stressed Appalachian communities. Other iterations of these approaches are now at the core of my college-level pedagogy. IF helped me build bridges between my creative life and the social imperative of being a photographer and teacher.

The Interactivity Foundation offers me excellent hands-on resources to help get students thinking more deeply about challenging issues. Their approach and the tools and practices they continually hone help students go beyond just repeating the headlines of the day and really dive into issues in a way that is holistic and rich. As a pedagogical partner, IF helps me give my students experiences of exploration and sustained thinking.

Every Collaborative Discussion Toolkit activity is very carefully built. They are designed to suit any subject at the academic level. These activities are not fixed and rigid models, they fit and enable academic freedom.

As a storyteller and educator, the Interactivity Foundation’s library-focused Collaborative Discussion Coach Training provided me with additional skills to assist in facilitating crucial conversations around academic freedom, the First Amendment, and privacy. I’m continually impressed by how IF embraces open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

[This online Community Conversation] was a great experience. Thank you very much to the Interactivity Foundation for providing this. One of the takeaways that I took from this was that when somebody says something that is really seeming very off to me like I don’t understand why they’re saying that or how it fits in the conversation that can actually, if I really listen and pay attention, that could be the thing that is the most surprising opportunity for me to learn, and really see a different perspective from what I had been coming in with.