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Common Ground Solutions Supports YLI’s Talking Turkey Program
Over the summer the YLI staff met with Common Ground Solutions (CGS) to see if there was a way to collaborate. During the discussions between CGS Founder, Howard Komar, and YLI Director, Meg Heubeck, it was decided that YLI would promote the use of CGS topic resources to support the Talking Turkey: Taking the 'Dis' Out of Civil Discourse program. Talking Turkey and Common Ground Solutions seek to end political polarization be encouraging thoughtful, fact-based discussions on current political topics.
Common Ground Solutions has big goals: to increase civic engagement; improve the quality of political discourse; highlight real-world stories of people working together across political lines; and forge moderate, commonsense solutions to our biggest challenges. Both organizations believe that the power to govern is not a prize to be won, but a responsibility to be used wisely and preserved for generations to come. The first step toward fulfilling that responsibility is finding common ground.
This fall all registered YLI teachers will receive a link to the Common Grounds Solutions website and instructions for how to establish political discussion in the classroom. This will include a classroom contract, a set of parameters for holding discussions, and pocket-sized Thomas Jefferson's Advice on Civility. The small staff at YLI doesn't have the resources to keep up to date on all political discussion so this partnership helps to strengthen our programming without increasing the workload. The partnership allows both organizations to meet the needs of educators across the nation.
For more information about Common Ground Solutions visit www.commongroundsolutions.org
