Democracy Dinners Return In-Person

On Monday, January 16, Learning Life successfully held its first in-person Democracy Dinner in three years as the Covid pandemic recedes and the DMV Democracy Learning Community (DLC) moves forward.

The Dinner, held at the home of a Learning Life supporter in Alexandria, Virginia, brought together fourteen people, most engaged in democracy work in different ways, from citizen engagement in health policy, to labor representation, to deliberation, polarization, electoral reform, and Congressional problem-solving (photos below of participants and the Greek food plus desserts we enjoyed).  The discussion focused on challenges and opportunities for democracy with an eye to developing a DLC in the metro Washington DC area.  This was the 37th Dinner since Learning Life began developing the DLC with its first Democracy Dinner in June 2019.  More than 200 DC area democracy sector professionals have participated in the Dinners, some repeatedly, since that first Dinner. 

Learning Life’s Democracy Dinners are smaller gatherings intended to nurture sustained, deeper, more participatory conversations than conventional networking events and panel discussions typically allow between democracy sector folks who might not otherwise meet given their specialty silos.  Learning Life has used the Dinners to build a list of now over 5,000 metro DC democracy sector professionals whom we invite to the Dinners and other DLC events.  The Dinners allow us to harness our growing participant network to develop the wider DLC: a growing association of individuals and organizations, starting in the Washington DC or DC-MD-VA (DMV) metro area, working together to strengthen democracy by developing engaging events, products, services and spaces that nurture fun, learning, networking, collaboration and wider, deeper citizen participation.  

In 2023, Learning Life will be releasing a vision and action as a series of published articles and a larger report that can be used to guide forthcoming DLC organizing, including a first DC Democracy Festival.  We also plan to hold at least five more Democracy Dinners in-person in 2023, one every other month.  If you live in metro DC and volunteer and/or work on one or more democracy issues, broadly defined, you can participate.  To reserve your spot at an upcoming Dinner, please fill out this Doodle scheduling poll.  To learn more about the Dinners, click here.    

Democracy Dinner participants are asked to contribute financially to support the Dinners and to help build the wider DLC: $100 for individuals, $150 for couples, $50 for Learning Life Democracy & Diplomacy Community (DDC) members, though you can contribute at whatever level you are comfortable with.  If you decide to join the DDC, please type “DDC member” in the Note box on the contribute page, and add “anonymous” if you wish to remain an anonymous member.  

What Happened in 2022, and What’s Coming in 2023

This annual report lays out our activities and accomplishments in 2022, from launching our Democracy & Diplomacy Community, releasing our first animated video, and successfully completing our first international family diplomat training, to transitioning our mentoring program.  As Executive Director, I conclude with thanks to a lot of volunteers, participants and donors who were instrumental in making 2022 a year of continued growth for Learning Life.  Throughout this report, I also share some pictures and collages of our people and activities.

Democracy & Diplomacy Community (DDC)

The DDC is a new Learning Life community that encompasses all our democracy and diplomacy initiatives.  As the DDC’s webpage notes, our divided yet interdependent world needs “not demagogues and strongmen, but rather citizens and diplomats,” so building on the 30,000+ people worldwide connected with Learning Life’s work, the DDC offers “learning and networking events, opportunities to share your work with a wider audience, and to help advance democracy and diplomacy at local to global levels.”  Developing more of the caring citizens and diplomats our world needs takes work, and learning communities, properly designed, provide the learning, opportunity and social support ordinary people worldwide need to thrive as such.

On September 17, 2022, in collaboration with the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College, Learning Life launched the DDC with our first in-person event in more than 2.5 years as the Covid pandemic waned.  The event featured a panel of three speakers followed by a participatory discussion on one of the most salient political issues in America today: polarization.  You can learn more about the event and speakers here, and watch the three panelists’ full presentations here via the Eisenhower Institute’s Youtube Channel.

In 2023, Learning Life will grow the DDC’s membership as we offer a variety of events, including in-person Democracy Dinners (more on these below), and new online Citizen Diplomacy International (CDI) meetings.  Citizen diplomacy (CD) can be defined as communication or collaboration among citizens (not government diplomats) across national borders for shared economic, political, cultural, educational, environmental, health, or other purposes.  Due to globalization, the internet, rising education levels, and long-term democratization across the world, CD is growing, and becoming a more important part of diplomacy and international affairs. I launched CDI in June 2020 as the Citizen Diplomacy Research Group (CDRG) under the aegis of the Public Diplomacy Council, now the Public Diplomacy Council of America (PDCA).  The Group’s email list has since grown to over 1,000 students, scholars and practitioners from 108 countries.  Since June 2020, CDRG meetings have been held every two months for 1.5 hours online via Zoom, with each meeting comprised of two presentations of CD research or practice followed by discussion then announcements.  Since October 2020, the CDRG has also published a CD Bulletin with every meeting, offering CD-related news, events, articles, books and resources.  Happily, these meetings and resources will become part of the DDC’s offerings as the CDRG becomes CDI, and moves from the PDCA to Learning Life in January 2023.  More about this development here.

Democracy Learning Community (DLC)

In response to growing threats to democracy in the USA and abroad, in June 2019, Learning Life launched the DLC in metro Washington DC (the “DMV” or DC-MD-VA capital region) with our Democracy Dinners.  The Dinners gather democracy (broadly defined) professionals, elected officials, activists and academics in metro Washington DC to nurture deeper conversation about the challenges and possibilities for democracy at local to global levels.  Then, due to Covid, from early 2020 to the end of 2022 the Dinners were held online.  Starting in January 2023 though, Learning Life is excited to return to in-person Dinners, and plans to hold at least six in the new year as part of our broader Democracy & Diplomacy Community.

In 2022, Learning Life began a second step in the development of the DLC with a series of planning meetings, interviews and online research in preparation for a vision and action plan to be published by June 2023.  To expand our imaginations of what a vibrant democracy can look like, the plan will describe a wide variety of existing and proposed ways to develop a DLC in metro regions like DC, in different domains of life, from families, to schools and workplaces, to libraries, malls, parks, media and associations.  Further, the plan will suggest how a day in the life of a child, working adult, retiree and unemployed person could look different in a DLC.  Lastly, the “action” part of the plan will lay out next steps in the growth of the DLC.  This includes the third step in building a DLC: a first DC Democracy Festival.  Our hope is that the Festival will ultimately occur annually on the National Mall, and spread in other metro regions in the United States and abroad as a fun, family-friendly, financially self-sustaining collaboration between arts, business, education, philanthropy and democracy sectors that helps widen and deepen participation in democracy.

Family Diplomacy Initiative (FDI)

While our DLC work is local, our Family Diplomacy Initiative is global.  In our increasingly interconnected yet divided world, FDI connects people online worldwide across country, class, race, religion, age and other lines of difference to share and learn together with an eye long-term to empowering families to participate in decision-making for a more caring world.

In 2017-2019, Learning Life completed two FDI pilot international learning projects with lower-income families in the USA, El Salvador, Senegal and Jordan, then in 2020, a food culture project.  These projects collectively yielded modest to significant improvements in interest and knowledge of international relations, comfort with difference, warmth toward foreign populations, and more (see Project 1 results, Project 2 results, and Project 3 results for details).  In 2021, Learning Life carried out a fourth dialogue project focused on the question: what do families worldwide need to be safe and healthy?  With that question in mind, Learning Life carried out six live international dialogues via Zoom from June to November 2021 that each examined different forces shaping family health and safety in light of the Covid pandemic and the fundamental importance of health to us all (the following links take you to the recordings of each of those live dialogues): world trends in family life, health care, work and economics, the environment, politics, and education and leisure.

In 2022, we took a step forward in FDI’s development, moving from Phase 1 to Phase 2 (see the poster below), successfully launching our first family diplomat (FD) training.  The training had two parts, and engaged nineteen FD trainees from fifteen countries every Sunday for 1.5 hours via Zoom from June 10 to October 30.  Part 1 of the training took place over the course of seven meetings, and focused on developing trainees’ basic knowledge about citizen diplomacy, plus global family trends, patterns and issues.  Part 2 occurred over the course of nine meetings devoted to learning about then practicing family storytelling given storytelling’s importance to giving voice and power to ordinary people facing myriad family issues.

The trainees were surveyed before and after Part 1 to measure their knowledge gains, and their stories were videotaped before and after Part 2 to assess improvement in their storytelling skill.  Our analysis showed that their knowledge improved by 11% on average, and their storytelling skill by 24% on average.  You can read the full analysis here, and watch their family story performances here and here.  Caution: many of the stories are serious rather than light-hearted, and some deal with violence, including domestic and sexual violence.

Another significant development in 2022: a first Learning Life animated video about FDI.  The less-than-three-minute video took ten months of steady work from late summer 2021 to late spring 2022, but that work by an all-volunteer team of interns — Yutong Jiang from George Washington University, Rachel Farzan and Maria Lujan from Virginia Commonwealth University (and me) — yielded a clear, visually appealing understanding of what FDI is about that will hopefully help spur people to get involved and financially support the Initiative for years to come.

Last but not least, thanks to Learning Life’s interns, we continue to rapidly grow FDI on Facebook.  In 2022, our FDI Facebook group grew about 36% from over 10,000 to over 13,600 members worldwide.  In addition, our interns have been systematically logging these new members, including their name, city, country, Facebook profile and other information, so as to detail our growth and cultivate engagement.  For example, each new member gets a personal welcome message via Facebook that includes our FD application survey for those interested in becoming family diplomats.  We also encourage new members to subscribe to our monthly Learning Life email news, and invite them to introduce their families in our Facebook group, and attend FDI events, notably the new FD trainings.

In 2023, we will continue to grow the FDI network on Facebook, and engage more people worldwide in the second annual FD training.  The FD training will also be deepened to include more free online content and more individualized support for our trainees as they develop their stories.

International Mentoring Program

Learning Life’s International Mentoring Program started in 2018 as a supplement to our Family Diplomacy Initiative.  The Program helped provide some of the youth ages 8-18 from lower-income families engaged in our FDI family dialogues in the USA, El Salvador and Senegal more connection to the wider world by matching them with mentors who read and talked with them about topics of interest to the youth — like dance, music and food — from an international perspective.  Over the course of 2021 and 2022, we maintained the program for our youth in Washington DC, where Learning Life is based, meeting in-person and/or online to experience foreign foods, cultural festivals, museums, and other international goods, events and places (see the photo collage below of some of our 2022 activities).  But, we did not recruit any new mentors in this period as we worked to focus more on democracy and diplomacy, and to accordingly shift our mentoring into FDI to help support our international FD trainees.

After five years in operation, with over 650 mentor-mentee meetings logged benefitting about thirty mentees in the USA, El Salvador and Senegal, our original mentoring program officially closed with our last monthly mentors meeting in November 2022.  All six remaining mentors, including me, plan to continue mentoring our mentees independent of Learning Life, and FDI remains open and free of charge to all of them.  You can view more of the activities of our mentoring program through the years since 2018 through our Facebook group, and learn how your family can become involved in family diplomacy at our FDI page. 

Five Ways You Can Help

As we enter 2023, here are five ways you can get connected, support our work and help Learning Life grow:

1) Stay tuned to Learning Life news by following our Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter pages, and sign up for our monthly email dispatches.

2) Engage in our Family Diplomacy Initiative: If you are on Facebook, join FDI, and invite your friends and family to the group who may be interested as we continue to grow the Initiative in 2023.  In addition, if you know youth, adults, and/or families that may be interested in engaging in international family diplomacy, invite them to apply to become Family Diplomats.

3) Join the Democracy & Diplomacy Community: Whether you live in metro Washington DC or elsewhere in the world, if you are interested in democracy and diplomacy, and think our world needs more citizens and diplomats than demagogues and strongmen, then join the DDC to learn, network, build bridges and support Learning Life.  Learn more here.

4) Become a Learning Life donor or sponsor: Donate $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or whatever you can afford here to support our innovative democracy and diplomacy work.  Individuals and organizations can also sponsor a family diplomat, or sponsor the DMV Democracy Learning Community.

5) Shop through iGive.com, and help fund Learning Life free. Shop more than 1,400 stores (Apple, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel, The Gap, KMart, Nordstrom, Sephora, Staples, Starbucks, Target, T-Mobile, Walgreens, and many more) through iGive, and if you make Learning Life your preferred charity, a percentage of your purchase will be donated to Learning Life at no cost to you.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the many volunteers, participants and donors who were essential to our growth and success in 2022, including (all from the USA unless otherwise noted):

Interns: Jibbi Bah, Josie Belliveau, Anna Benson, Sarah DeCaro-Rincon, Janice Dias, Jenalyn Dizon, Yas El Argoubi (Morocco), Fatima Elescano, Nate Escobar, Kevin Espino, Allie Hechmer, Ninah Henderson, Aminata Keita, Chanel Leonard, Mae Long, Ava McClure, Sarah McInnis, Destiny Monegro, Anya Neumeister, Keilyhan Echevarria Padilla, Maryam Pate, Macy Pope, Alexandra Ravano, Ashley Slonecker, River Stone, Edward Taylor, Emma Tomaszewski, Avanti Tulpule.

FDI animated video production team: Rachel Farzan, Yutong Jiang, Paul Lachelier, and Maria Lujan.

Mentors: Chris Comer, Cassie Dick, Aileene Duyan, Marissa Hall, Marley Henschen, Paul Lachelier, Suzanne Lachelier, Sherry Liu (China).

Family diplomat trainers: Denise Bodman, Andreas Fulda (United Kingdom), Sangeetha Madhavan, Joe Toles, Ben Yavitz, Bethany Van Vleet.

Family diplomats: Chirunim Agi-Otto (Nigeria), Aaron Akomea (Ghana), Tenille Archie (Trinidad & Tobago), Gustavo Carvajal (Costa Rica), Ittie Chaunzar (Zimbabwe), Atenkeng Cynthia (Cameroon), Quanchao “Marvin” Fan (China), Mulbah Isaac Flomo (Liberia), Belle Gjeloshi (Albania), Esma Gumberidze (Georgia), Nusrat Jahan Nipa (Bangladesh), Lekshmi K (India), Tadiwa Mudede (Zimbabwe), Sami Noman (Pakistan), Leroy Quoi (Liberia), Mohammad Siavash (Afghanistan), Chloe Terani, Joe Toles, and Justice Umesi Onyekachi (Nigeria). 

DLC planning participants: Doug Addison, Asia Alvarado, Pam Bailey, Mindy Burrell, Patrick Cole, Laurie Cooper, Kate Howard, Patrick McDermott, Fariba Parsa, Libby Pope, Jeff Prudhomme, Brad Rourke, Emily Samose, Devin Scanlon, Kathleen Schmermund, William Schneider, Ashley Warren, Scott Warren, Jim Williams, and more than fifty others who completed DLC input surveys in 2022.

Board of Directors: Khadija Hashemi, Suzanne Lachelier, and Joe Toles.

Board of Advisors: Golnar Abedin, Janine Branch, Bert Brandenburg, Dandan Chen, Matt Clausen, Maia Comeau, Loren Hurst, Darrell Irwin, Raymond Karam, Cindy Mah, Andreas Prauhart, Curtis Raynold, Emily Samose, John Schorr, Nancy Walker, Jim Williams, and Ben Yavitz. 

Donors: Marcia Anglarill, Anders Beer, Shelley &  Doug Antuna, Neme Bidjada, Bert Brandenburg, Michael Brown, Nick Burton, Ukiah Jacob Busch, Dandan Chen, Matt Clausen, Wally Clausen, James Coan, Michael Deal, Margarita Diaz, Pat Diaz, Brianna Dimas, Rachel Dungan, Nichola Dyer, Eric & Jeanne Evenson, Quanchao Marvin Fan, Craig Gusmann, Khadija Hashemi, Darrell Irwin, Desmond Jordan, Steve Kolb, Joe & Theresa Krettek, Eric Kurlander, The Lachelier Family, members of The Ladder, Steve Lainez, Cindy Mah, Zainab Mahdi, David Meskill, Daniel Moses, Sherry Mueller, Jaclyn O’Day, Nancy Overholt, Maryam Pate, Kelly Pemberton, Tony Perez, Thomas Ponniah, Seth Radwell, Christopher Raleigh, Kate Raftery, Curtis Raynold, Al Roca, Emily Samose, Jordan Sandman, John Schorr, William Schneider, Arthur Siebens, Yves Taylor-Potts, Joe Toles, Debbie Trent, Carmen & John Vaughan, Nancy Walker, Jim Williams, Ben Yavitz, and anonymous donors.   

My apologies if I missed anyone.  If I did, please let me know yours or their name(s) at paul@learninglife.info so that I may acknowledge you or them here.

Thank you for your interest and support!  Here’s to a healthier, more caring, connected world in 2023!

Paul Lachelier, Ph.D.
Founder & Director, Learning Life

Report: 2022 Family Diplomacy Training Impact

From July 10 to October 30 this year, Learning Life successfully held our first Family Diplomacy Initiative (FDI) training for family diplomats (FDs). This report details our process and results in measuring the impact of the training on participating FDs.

The FD training marks the beginning of FDI Phase 2: training a growing corps of volunteers worldwide to be family diplomats capable of effectively advocating for families that share similar challenges, from depression, disability or discrimination, to displacement, war, or climate change.  See the “Family Diplomacy Vision” poster below for more about the three planned phases of FDI’s development.

Launched in 2016, FDI is an ambitious, long-term, grassroots effort to connect, train and empower a growing international corps of family diplomats to participate in decision-making at local to global levels.  We envision a world more connected and caring because every family has one or more family diplomats, and those citizen diplomats advocate effectively via nonprofits, businesses, media and governments for the needs, concerns and aspirations of families worldwide.  From 2016 to 2021, Learning Life worked on FDI Phase 1, growing our international family diplomacy community on Facebook to now over 13,000 people worldwide, and conducting live, international dialogues on family issues.  As we continue increasing the number of people globally connected to FDI via Facebook, Phase 2 will over the coming years develop family diplomacy training, and gradually build a corps of committed FDs in collaboration with allied nonprofits across the world.  These FDs will begin advocating on issues affecting families via media, businesses, nonprofits and governments.  Ultimately, as we continue Phase 1 and 2, we will, in Phase 3, begin institutionalizing the placement of well-trained FDs with collaborating media, business, nonprofit and government agencies to give meaningful voice and decision-making power to families.  Thus, FDI is not a 10 or 20 year project, but rather a permanent movement to empower families for a more caring world.

About the 2022 FD Training

In 2022, the FD training consisted of two parts:

Part 1: July 10-August 21 (seven meetings): FDs learned about (a) trends, patterns and issues facing families across the world, plus (b) citizen diplomacy (i.e., citizens collaborating internationally on shared interests and issues) in order to develop their basic knowledge as family-diplomats-in-training.  

Part 2: August 28-October 23 (nine meetings):  FDs learned about storytelling, then each practiced and performed a family story of their own.  (The ability to tell family stories effectively is one powerful way to speak to the needs, concerns and aspirations of families.)

The last meeting occurred on October 30 and focused on discussing what went well and what could be improved in the training.  Click here to learn more about the FD training, including eligibility, benefits, and other details.

The first cohort of FD trainees consisted of 19 individuals from 15 countries: Costa Rica, Trinidad & Tobago, USA, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Zimbabwe, Albania, Georgia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and China.  Seventeen completed Part 1 of the training, and seventeen completed Part 2.

Evaluation Method

For Part 1, Learning Life staff assessed the trainees’ improvement in knowledge about citizen diplomacy and global family trends, patterns and issues by comparing their answers to the same survey question before and after six weekly training meetings from July 17 to August 21.  This simple, open-ended survey question was: “What do you know about citizen diplomacy, and the patterns, trends and issues facing families across the world?”  In both the pre- and post-training surveys, trainees had ten minutes to type their answers to the question.  Then, their pre- and post-training answers were mixed up and anonymized so the four volunteers who evaluated the trainees’ answers could not identify the persons, nor which answers were typed before or after the training.  Over about two hours in one weekend meeting, Learning Life’s founder and director, Dr. Paul Lachelier, first trained the four evaluators on how to numerically score the answers using the following simple rubric, then led the evaluators through the scoring of all Part 1 pre and post-training survey answers.

Rubric: “For each survey answer, score fact density (1, 2 or 3), then coherence (1, 2, or 3), then add up the two scores (lowest score=2, highest score=6).”  

For Part 2, Learning Life staff measured the trainees’ improvement in their storytelling ability by comparing their story performances before and after five weekly story training and practice meetings from September 11 to October 9.  For their pre-training stories, the trainees were instructed not to prepare but rather to just tell a family story in five minutes or less on either August 28 or September 4.  Learning Life staff video recorded fourteen of the seventeen trainee pre-stories on these two days during our scheduled Sunday meetings.  The remaining three trainees audio recorded their stories and uploaded them to Learning Life’s Google Drive after these dates, due to unstable video connection in the case of two trainees, and missing the August 28 and September 4 meetings in the case of the third.  After the training, the seventeen trainees video or audio recorded (16 of 17 were able to video record) their stories and uploaded them, some with the assistance of Learning Life interns.  Only in two of seventeen cases did evaluators compare audio pre-stories with video post-stories, the rest were “apples-to-apples,” video-to-video and (only one) audio-to-audio comparisons.

On Sunday, December 4, Dr. Lachelier organized ten Learning Life volunteers into two teams of five story evaluators, and met with each team once over about 2.5 hours to train them on the simple story-scoring rubric below.  The first team scored nine trainees (nine pre-stories + nine post-stories for a total of eighteen stories), the second scored eight trainees (eight pre-stories + eight post-stories for a total of sixteen stories).  Dr. Lachelier showed the teams the stories in random order, and instructed the evaluators not to worry about “figuring out which are pre-training, and which are post-training stories” but to “just focus on the stories: their clarity and power.”  He also instructed them to judge audio stories based on what they could hear, and video stories based on what they could see and hear, and in all cases, not to “grade down the storyteller for their accent” as “clarity here refers to that which you are able to understand despite any accent, and whether that makes logical sense.”      

After the evaluation teams scored the pre- and post-training stories, Dr. Lachelier organized and analyzed the scores.  He ultimately dropped the scores of four evaluators, two on each team so that each story was scored by three evaluators.  In one team it was unclear in two evaluators’ cases which scores belonged to which trainees, so Dr. Lachelier randomly dropped two evaluators’ scores from the second team.  The evaluators whose scores were used did not know the trainees, and hence could not be biased due to familiarity.  However, the evaluators’ scores could have been biased by their perception of the voices or appearance of trainees since they could see and/or hear the trainees’ story performances via the audio or video recordings.

Rubric: “For each story, score clarity 1, 2 or 3, then power 1, 2, or 3, then add up the two scores (lowest score=2, highest score=6).”  

Evaluation Results & Discussion

The seventeen trainees who completed Part 1 improved their knowledge scores by 11% on average, from 3.8 out of 6 points prior to the training, to 4.2 out of 6 after the training.  Eleven of the seventeen trainees improved their scores, six had worse scores.  The eleven who improved had a 1.09 out of 6 or 30% average score increase, while the six whose scores worsened had a 0.88 out of 6 or 22% average score decrease.

The seventeen trainees who completed Part 2 improved their storytelling scores by 24% on average, from 4.08 out of 6 points prior to the training, to 5.06 out of 6 after the training.  Fifteen of the seventeen trainees improved their scores, one had a worse score, and one had no change in score. The fifteen who improved had a 1.16 out of 6 or 29% average score increase, while the one whose score worsened had a 0.66 or 15% score decrease.

The trainees’ Part 1 essay answers in many cases contained more expressions of opinions than demonstrations of knowledge.  Accordingly, Part 1 knowledge scores may improve more overall if we provide trainees, before their pre- and post-surveys, specific examples of answers that demonstrate less versus more knowledge, not just note that we are scoring improvement in knowledge.  Following pedagogical principles of repetition and recall, more review of key facts and concepts, like at the start of each training session as well as in Facebook FD group messages, and asking trainees to recall the knowledge in discussion, may also help enrich and cement their learning.

For evaluation of Part 2 storytelling, there are a number of specific ways we can improve the conditions under which our evaluators score to reduce the risk of bias, help them evaluate, and avoid trainee-score confusion.  First, we can remind the evaluators of each row in which they enter their scores as they proceed through viewing and scoring stories.  Second, when we are recording the trainees’ pre- and post-training stories via Zoom, we can set the visuals to viewer rather than gallery view so that our scorers can more clearly see and evaluate the trainees’ physical performance (e.g., facial expressions, body movements, use of props).  Third, we can more consistently ensure that subtitles are provided on all those stories where the storyteller has a thick accent or bad internet connection that can impede comprehension.  Fourth, we should be mindful of the order in which our evaluators see and score the stories as this may bias them to score higher or lower depending on, for example, whether they first view a well-told story or a poorly-told story.

Thus, overall, the trainees improved modestly in their knowledge of citizen diplomacy and global family life, and considerably in their skill at storytelling.  There are a number of specific ways Learning Life can improve the training to boost and cement learning, and the evaluation to clarify as well as reduce scorer bias and confusion.

 “​​The FD training made me a better storyteller.  I now know how to more effectively structure and present a story, and that enables me to advocate more effectively for myself, my family, and the issues we care about.” – Nusrat Jahan Nipa, Bangladesh

Acknowledgements

Learning Life is grateful to our trainees — Chirunim Agi-Otto, Aaron Akomea, Tenille Archie, Gustavo Carvajal, Ittie Chaunzar, Atenkeng Cynthia, Quan Chao Fan, Mulbah Isaac Flomo, Belle Gjeloshi, Esma Gumberidze, Lekshmi Lucky, Tadiwa Mudede, Nusrat Jahan Nipa, Sami Noman, Justice Umesi Onyekachi, Leroy Quoi, Mohammad Siavash, Chloe Terani, and Joe Toles — for their participation in the inaugural year of our FD training. 

We thank our summer and fall interns — Anna Benson, Sarah DeCaro-Rincon, Janice Dias, Jenalyn Dizon, Yas El Argoubi, Fatima Elescano, Allie Hechmer, Ninah Henderson, Chanel Leonard, Mae Long, Sarah McInnis, Anya Neumeister, Maryam Pate, Alexandra Ravano, Emma Tomaszewski, Avanti Tulpule — for supporting our trainees.

We are also grateful to our trainers — Denise Bodman, Bethany Van Vleet, Sangeetha Madhavan, Andreas Fulda, Lisette Alvarez and Ben Yavitz — for effectively teaching our FDs about family, diplomacy, and storytelling.  As well, thanks to our training evaluation volunteers — Peter Amponsah, Chelsea Dicus, Ruya Gokhan, Darrell Irwin, Cindy Mah, Zainab Mahdi, Arisa Oshiro, Edward Taylor, John Vaughan, Stacey Zlotnick, as well as interns Allie Hechmer. Ninah Henderson, Chanel Leonard, and Anya Neumeister — for their scoring of the trainees’ knowledge and storytelling ability. 

Last but far from least, we thank all our donors who help support our Family Diplomacy Initiative, with special appreciation to Michael Brown, Nick Burton, Khadija Hashemi, Ana, Francois and Suzanne Lachelier, Sherry Mueller, Bill Schneider, Joe Toles and some anonymous donors for their generous financial support.

“Family Diplomacy is an eye opener to the world of diplomacy. We all know problems that affect our families, societies, and by extension humanity globally.  But for the FD intervention, I couldn’t structure, tailor and share those issues to attract attention.” –Aaron Akomea, Ghana

Announcing Learning Life’s Outstanding Volunteers & Family Diplomats of 2022

Learning Life is pleased to announce its outstanding volunteers and family diplomats (FDs) of 2022.  “Learning Life is blessed with a growing number of volunteers and family diplomats worldwide, and we are happy to recognize and reward those who contributed to our international democracy and diplomacy work in outstanding ways,” said Learning Life’s founder and director, Paul Lachelier.   

The volunteer awards were for outstanding mentor, Board of Advisors member, and interns.  The FD awards were for most improved family storytellers who participated in Learning Life’s inaugural FD training as part of Learning Life’s Family Diplomacy Initiative (FDI).  You can see each of the award recipients below as well as all our 2022 FD family storytellers.  

FDI is an ambitious, long-term effort to connect, train and empower a growing international corps of FDs to participate in decision-making at local to global levels.  The FDs’ training — in citizen diplomacy, advocacy skills (starting with family storytelling), plus family trends, patterns and issues — is vital to their ability to effectively advocate for families across the world.  Learning Life successfully launched the FD training this year (more details on the training and its impact to come in our end-of-year report), and will continue to develop it over the coming years as we also grow our international corps of FDs.    

This year, all those FDs who completed the nearly four-month training, meeting weekly on Sundays from July 10 to October 30, were given certificates of completion, with or without honors depending on their attendance, participation, and completion of and improvement in pre- and post-training evaluation surveys and/or family stories. Nineteen individuals from fifteen countries completed Part 1 of the training (focused on developing knowledge about citizen diplomacy and global family trends, patterns and issues) and/or Part 2 (focused on developing skill in storytelling).  The certificate awards were announced for the following people, who completed both Parts 1 and 2, unless otherwise noted: 

Certificates of Completion: Chirunim Agi-Otto (Nigeria), Ittai Chaunzar (Zimbabwe), Atenkeng Cynthia (Cameroon, Part 2 only), Marvin Fan (China, Part 1 only), Justice Onyekachi (Nigeria), Mohammad Siavash (Afghanistan, Part 2 only), Chloe Terani (USA), Joe Toles (USA), and Gustavo Villalobos (Costa Rica). 

Certificates of Completion, with Honors: Aaron Akomea (Ghana), Tenille Archie (Trinidad & Tobago), Mulbah Flomo (Liberia), Belle Gjeloshi (Albania), Esma Gumberidze (Georgia), Nusrat Jahan Nipa (Bangladesh, Part 2 only), Lekshmi K (India, Part 1 only), Tadiwa Mudede (Zimbabwe), Sami Noman (Pakistan), and Leroy Quoi (Liberia).  

Click here to learn more about each of our family diplomats and their families.  All those who completed Part 2 on family storytelling receive a $100 stipend.  They are featured in the poster below along with their country and family story topic:

The five winners of the “most improved family storyteller” award receive an additional $100 award beyond the $100 stipend for all 2022 family storytellers in the above. These award winners are:   

Learning Life’s outstanding mentor in 2022 is Sherry Liu, pictured below with her mentee, Alaz’yah.   

Our outstanding Board of Advisors member is Ben Yavitz:

Last but not least, Learning Life’s three outstanding interns of 2022 are:

Learning Life’s outstanding mentor, interns and Board of Advisors member receive a one-year subscription to National Geographic Magazine in appreciation for their contributions.