# Community Conversations

**Source**: https://dso.college.harvard.edu/community-conversations
**Parent**: https://dso.college.harvard.edu/transfer-students

## Discover the amazing community around you!

**Community Conversations** is a program sponsored by the [**Harvard Foundation**](/office-culture-community/about-harvard-foundation "About the Harvard Foundation") and the [**First-Year Experience (FYE) Office**](https://dso.college.harvard.edu/first-year-experience). During the Summer, the First-Year class completed a series of six modules offered by the **Constructive Dialogue Institute (CDI)**, and the Harvard Foundation Team utilized the lessons learned within those modules to create a training that encouraged students to reflect on their identities and explore their own responsibility toward building an inclusive community on campus.

**Proctors and Peer Advising Fellows (PAFs)** continue to play a vital role in fostering an inclusive community at Harvard College, and this exercise is designed to affirm their facilitative leadership role within our residential community.

**The Objectives** for community conversations are:

- To **facilitate relationship building** across differences by offering opportunities for students to create meaningful connections through conversation
- To **encourage students to reflect** upon their application of the CDI skills in their daily practice at Harvard
- To **enhance students’ comfort level with engaging in dialogue** when there are differences of opinion or perspective

The entryway meeting itself consists of a review of the CDI principles, a short icebreaker and group discussion, a storytelling activity, and a hypothetical case study adapted from the CDI modules.

As a reminder, we hope that this facilitated conversation is just the first of many opportunities to better know and understand yourselves and each other—whether casually in dorm rooms and dining halls, or more formally in classrooms, entryway meetings, and sponsored programs!

## Questions about Community Conversations?

#### [Contact Us](mailto:harvfoun@fas.harvard.edu)

Community Conversations is jointly supported by the  and the [First-Year Experience Office](/first-year-experience).