Bridging Divides Badging & Microcredential Program
Bridge-building skills create better leaders and problem solvers while strengthening and restoring relationships and interactions. These skills can improve our ability to collaborate with our own teams as well as people "outside our bubble."
Our ability to build bridges is not innate. It takes time and dedication to cultivate skills that can help us practice the art of bridge-building. We tend to avoid things we don’t know how to do. That includes building relationships with people who are different from us. Thankfully, all it takes is a desire to connect and a few basic skills.
Be a Leader
Everyone plays a leadership role in some way. Being an effective leader requires us to listen, understand and work with people and ideas different from our own.
Be a Problem Solver
Complex problems require innovative solutions. Those solutions are better when we are open to different opinions - even if we disagree with them.
Be a Relationship Builder
Contempt destroys relationships. Gain skills to help you heal relationships and open doors to communication and understanding.
You can bring people together across differences.
We created a pathway for Listen First Coalition partners to offer a variety of courses that teach the basic skills needed to be an effective bridge builder at home, in the workplace, and in community spaces:
Listening
Dialogue
Collaboration
For each skill acquired, a digital badge is earned. Receiving a badge indicates that the individual has learned and applied best practices that are core to the skill. Examples of best practices include: Building understanding; Listening with curiosity and empathy; Creating conversation agreements; Reflection; Building Community and Belonging; Collaborative Problem Solving; Depolarization, and others.
The basic criteria required for a course to be endorsed can be seen below.
Have a course that your organization offers that focuses on teaches skills of bridge building? Listen First Coalition partners are encouraged to submit their course offerings for consideration of endorsement through this program. Courses receiving endorsement will be featured on Conversation.us/Skill-Up.
This program is endorsed by the Bridging Movement Collaborative, a collective leadership effort to erase toxic division from our civic culture while building productive civic engagement. It is also endorsed by Bridge Alliance and supported by the National Coalition of Dialogue and Deliberation. The program is made possible through partnership with the Civics Credentialing System, an initiative of Team Democracy.