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What is Intergroup Dialogue (IGD)? 
Intergroup dialogue (IGD) is a structured and facilitated process that brings together individuals from diverse social backgrounds to engage in open and honest conversations about social justice issues, identity, power differences, and intergroup relations. The primary goal of intergroup dialogue is to foster understanding, empathy, and collaboration across differences while addressing issues of social inequality and injustice.
 

Key Elements of intergroup dialogue include: 

1. Active Listening: Participants are encouraged to actively listen to each other's perspectives without judgment or interruption, fostering empathy and understanding. 
2. Reflection and Self-awareness: IGD encourages participants to reflect on their own identities, biases, and social power, promoting self-awareness and personal growth.
3. Critical Analysis: Participants engage in critical analysis of social justice issues, exploring the root causes of inequality and injustice within their communities and society at-large.
4. Understanding Power: Critical to effective IGD is making explicit perceptions and experiences of power. Power exists in social structures (i.e., schools, laws, media) and in relationships (e.g., teacher-student, peer-peer, parent-child, mentor-mentee), and meaningful change occurs as we understand the different levels at which power functions–intra-personally, interpersonally, and institutionally.
5. Collaborative Problem-solving: IGD emphasizes collaborative problem-solving and action-oriented dialogue, empowering participants to work together towards positive social change.
6. Building Relationships Across Differences: By engaging in dialogue with individuals from diverse backgrounds, participants develop meaningful relationships, build trust, bridge divides, and build participants’ capacities for collective action.

Why Promote and Facilitate Intergroup Dialogues?
Allport (1954) was one of the first academic scholars in the Western academic tradition (henceforth referred to as “scholars”) to propose intergroup contact as an antidote to prejudicial and discriminatory behavior between majority and minoritized groups. Since his initial writing, the efficacy and usefulness of intergroup contact (under some key conditions that need to be met) as a way to reduce prejudice and conflict has been studied and supported in work with both children and adults around topics including race, sexual orientation, immigration status, and more  (see Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006; Al Ramiah & Hewstone, 2013).

As a form of intergroup contact, scholars and educational theorists have written about and studied IGD as a way to increase individuals’ awareness and desire to act to remedy social justice issues negatively impacting them or others (e.g., Zuniga, 2007). The positive effects of IGD, if facilitated well, have been found to include greater perspective taking, more positive views of conflict and conflict resolution, greater hope for intergroup relations, greater intergroup friendships, and greater inclination to engage in social justice action (Dessel & Rogge, 2008). However, if IGD and/or related social justice discussions are facilitated with poor understanding of principles including multi-partiality; critical consciousness; and power dynamics, individuals may report feeling more harm than if they had not entered into dialogue at all and/or further division and marginalization might occur (Sue et al., 2009).

Through our work at the center, we hope to improve and enhance intergroup dialogue participation and facilitation skills within 911������ and beyond, that all may benefit from this important element in compassion, equity and social justice work.