Essential Partners

Essential Partners is a 501(c)3 nonprofit, founded in1989 as the Public Conversations Project in Cambridge, MA. We build trust, connection, and understanding across differences through structured dialogues that dismantle stereotypes and foster relationships and resilience. Our trademark methodology, Reflective Structured Dialogue (RSD), helps communities and institutions have healthier, more complex, more inclusive conversations about polarizing differences of values, beliefs, and identities—whether the issue is building a new public school in Ohio or addressing the global refugee crisis in Jordan. Essential Partners helps civic groups, faith communities, colleges, and organizations build resilience, cohesion, and trust across deep divides of values, beliefs, and identities. We do this in several ways: > Training stakeholders in our trademark dialogue approach > In long-term collaborations to shift community or institutional cultures > Co-creating new proprietary programs and materials > Via remote program design consultation and coaching > Facilitating dialogue around particularly tough topics > Through ongoing research, evaluation, and innovation To learn more about the stories of our impact over the last 30 years, please visit https://www.whatisessential.org/impact-stories.