What is a Collaborative Learning Cohort?
Collaborative Learning Cohorts (CLCs) provide a forum for deep learning across our Community of Practice and center contributions from members of our Peer Learning Community to showcase their work and invite others to engage with and learn more about the methods they are using to counter hate and division.
Collaborative Learning Cohorts offer a range of learning opportunities from engaging panel discussions, to immersive workshops, and content that can be accessed at your own pace and downloaded, used, and adapted across contexts. These options are all aimed at cultivating practical insights into innovative approaches to counter hate and division while forming connections with those actively using these approaches in their work.
TP hopes that participation in a CLC will offer cohort members the chance to deepen peer-to-peer connections and catalyze collaborations with one another. CLCs are open to anyone working to counter hate and division in their communities; we encourage you to join even if you are not currently a member of the TP Community of Practice.
Past Cohorts
The final CLC of 2022 focused on understanding how members of our community have advanced building U.S. community resilience since the insurrection on the Capitol in January 2021. CLC is rooted in the belief that peer- to-peer connections across diverse perspectives are integral to effectively weathering the storm we face. Recognizing both the ongoing leadership of our members, alongside the tremendous challenges we continue to face to our democracy, this cohort focused on sharing analysis around the level of preparedness amongst civil society to prevent political violence and division and identify any gaps that may still exist.
This CLC provided a space for rich conversation and learning. Workshops offered a reflective space to assess the progress and pitfalls we have faced as individual practitioners and organizations, what practices are being implemented well, what needs to be prioritized and provided members with useful examples and tools on how practitioners working in different parts of the country enable communities to act resilient in the face of political violence.
click here to have access to the resources with sample activities and scenarios to encourage further brainstorming and preparedness planning for the 2024 US Presidential election.
The second CLC of 2022 focused on holistic wellness. Thought Partnerships believes that holistic wellbeing is fundamental to creating peace and transformation in the world around us. The problems we are trying to solve are multifaceted, as are the people at the forefront of solving them. We are intentional about convening spaces that are safe, flexible, compassionate, and welcoming of the whole-of-self. TP strives to embed opportunities for wellbeing throughout all we do to honor the humanity that we each bring to this work. We also believe that there is no wellness without the we, and that wellness is most nourishing when it is rooted in community.
The aim of this CLC was to source best practices, practical skill sharing and cultivate connections across our community. It encouraged a 360 view on wellness and offered a space for deepening peer community relationships, gaining new skills and catalyzing collaborations to support and invigorate our Peer Learning Community on their wellness journey.
TP convened a four part workshop series that was offered live via zoom and asynchronously on our HUB platform. With the guidance and facilitation of Thought Partnerships, cohort collaborators were given the space to foster deep reflections on their wellness practices and habits with the intention of expanding on them. The participants were encouraged to restore balance to their personal self and with other external factors of wellness, such as community, family, friends, work and other relationships.
If you can benefit from the wellness practices and tools shared during this Collaborative Learning Cohort, we encourage you to enroll in this course here.
The first CLC of 2022 focused on Community-Based Approaches to Combating Hate Speech. This cohort spotlighted four organizations from Thought Partnerships’ Peer Learning Community that led a four part workshop series focused on tactical skill sharing.
Contributors shared approaches to combating hate speech in active bystander scenarios, with youth leaders in school settings, with sensitization for journalists and on designing communication to counter harmful messaging. The cohort exchanged reflections that fostered real time conversations and catalyzed collaborations across the TP community– the heart of the CLC experience. Through engaging activities and presentations, the cohort built relationships with each other, gained deeper knowledge on immediate impact strategies and had the opportunity to amplify their work as peacebuilding practitioners.
To learn more about the participating organizations and access the tools shared during this Collaborative Learning Cohort, click here.
Thought Partnerships’ inaugural CLC focused on storytelling and creative media as an approach to countering hate and division. Storytelling is central to the human experience. Human beings are storytellers and stories play a key role in how we make sense and meaning of the world.
As peace and conflict practitioners we know how narratives play a role in shaping people’s identities, their beliefs and perceptions and thus play a role in shaping conflict and even creating conflict. At the same time, storytelling and narratives can be a powerful tool for reducing conflict, changing perceptions, and building towards reconciliation.
In the formation of this series, a small cohort of Thought Partnerships' Peer Learning Community came together to co-design and curate this learning series. With deep practice and experience in using storytelling and creative media as a tool to counter hate and division, this group of collaborators offered practical wisdom and insights to help others implement storytelling and creative media approaches in their contexts.
Through a compilation of self-paced learning modules and virtual live sessions, we aimed to bring participants into an experience of the power storytelling holds to create emotional breakthroughs, to enable people to build empathy, to see ourselves in the “other” and the “other” in us; to connect; for memory and remembrance, for healing and forgiveness, and for telling stories of change, of transformation, and of the resilience of those who came before us.