Community Cornerstones: Creating Spaces that are Welcoming and Resilient

Photo credit: Roman Williams

In times of division, communities need leaders and institutions that can bring people together across deep differences. That’s the insight animating Essential Partners, a nonprofit organization that has spent 35 years helping people connect across divides and strengthen trust and understanding. 

With support from New Pluralists’ Healing Starts Here, they launched the Community Cornerstones Initiative in the Research Triangle in North Carolina, alongside the Dispute Settlement Center, North Carolina’s oldest mediation center, and Interfaith Photovoice, a group that uses visual storytelling to help people see each other’s perspectives more clearly. Together, they sought to equip key institutions at the heart of community life — like houses of worship, schools, nonprofits, the arts, and local government — with the skills and relationships to navigate tension and foster deeper belonging, trust, and resilience.

It is a reminder that pluralism is not just about dialogue, it is about creating durable relationships that can weather the most difficult times.

From Silence to Shared Space

Photo credit: Roman Williams

At the heart of the initiative is the Community Dialogue Fellowship, which trains community leaders to facilitate conversations and collaborative problem-solving in their own neighborhoods, workplaces, and institutions. This has grown into a network of healers, bridgers, and facilitators who lean on one another and who, individually and collectively, have begun to make a difference in the way the community interacts around important and difficult tensions.

For example, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, a rabbi in this community found herself facing a congregation fractured by grief and disagreement. Friends had stopped speaking. Neighbors avoided one another. The community she had built over years felt like it was unraveling. She knew that without a safe place to talk, the divides within her synagogue would only grow.

Through the Community Cornerstones Initiative, she invited her congregation into a series of structured dialogues, beginning with small listening circles that gave space for grief and lament. Over time, these circles expanded into conversations where members could share personal stories, acknowledge differences, and reconnect around their shared faith. What began as silence and avoidance became a renewed sense of community. 

The rabbi’s synagogue’s experience mirrors what Community Cornerstones has sparked across the Triangle: when leaders create safe space for honest dialogue, fractured relationships can begin to mend, and institutions can emerge stronger and more resilient in the face of division.

Leaders Who Listen, Communities That Last

The impact extended far beyond a single congregation. Over two years, local leaders from across The Triangle co-created new programs, practiced ways of having hard conversations, and built a network of leaders committed to helping the region thrive. They have guided students to discuss elections without naming political parties, brought police officers into restorative listening circles, and helped faith leaders open space to talk about identity, race, and belonging.

By training leaders across local institutions and linking them in a network, Essential Partners and its partners are ensuring that when tensions rise, whether over a school dispute, a neighborhood conflict, or a national crisis, communities can respond together.

“This is the work of creating pluralism. At the grassroots level, community by community, cornerstone by cornerstone, learning together, staying together, supporting one another.”