In January 2024, President DeGioia and visiting members of the Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF) collaborated on a plan to broaden the reach of their program and materials to a wider, American audience. The PCFF, an organization comprising over 900 Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in conflicts, seeks to educate audiences about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through personal stories. These stories of unbearable loss, grief, and hope create essential spaces for listening, dialogue, and humanity within schools, organizations, and communities.
Kim Huisman from CNDLS and Susannah McGowan from The Red House partnered with American PCFF executive director Shiri Ourian, PCFF communications director Lior Ben-Zvi, and videographer Ayelet Harel to design materials to contextualize and situate the stories for educational spaces in the US: universities, high schools, community organizations, and religiously-affiliated groups.
Over the course of six months, Kim and Susannah collaborated closely with the PCFF team to design a curriculum focused on developing listening skills to better understand the conflict through stories. Meeting weekly, the Georgetown design team worked with PCFF to shape instructional materials into an accessible structure that emphasizes context, active listening, and emotional processing of stories from parents, siblings, and family members who have lost loved ones. The team also contributed to the creation of the program’s title, Listening from the Heart, resulting in an instructional PDF and an asynchronous online course that includes videos, reflection exercises, and activities.
The support team was expanded through additional CNDLS expertise, including Joe King, who starred in and produced introductory videos alongside Ijeoma Njaka from The Red House; Rob Pongsajapan who developed online course modules for the designed materials; and Mimi Shang who brought the materials to life through thoughtful and engaging graphic design.
The Georgetown design team also engaged in a comprehensive review process involving multiple campus partners including Rabbi Rachel Gartner and Emma Jaster (Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics), Fatemeh Hosseini (Center for Social Justice), David Ebenbach (CNDLS), Aida Fahoum (teacher and learning resource specialist), and Joyce Zhao (graduate associate, CNDLS). Each reviewer provided thorough, thoughtful feedback.
The next steps for this project include implementing the Listening from the Heart program at Georgetown as part of the Georgetown Dialogues Initiative.
The entire design, production, and peer review process exemplified not only the values-based design approach of CNDLS and The Red House but also the core values of Georgetown University–emphasizing social justice, community engagement, and the power of dialogue to foster understanding across differences. In September, Kim and Susannah joined Georgetown vice president and chief of staff Joe Ferrara at New York University, where they featured PCFF members and the Listening from the Heart program at their inaugural event of the NYU Dialogue Series.
