THE FAMILY DIPLOMACY INITIATIVE
Family is by far the most valued relationship in people’s lives across the world, surpassing work, politics, leisure, friends, and religion, according to the World Values Survey. At the same time, families are affected by the wide range of problems societies face, from diabetes and depression, to pollution and climate change, poverty and recessions, and war and terrorism. Despite the family’s vulnerability and value worldwide, seldom are families invited to participate in decision-making alongside business, labor and government, or engaged to connect people across the world’s cultural, economic and political divides. Family is thus a culturally powerful yet largely untapped force for a more caring world.
Learning Life’s Family Diplomacy Initiative (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.
To achieve this vision, Learning Life is tapping into the power of the internet. Not everyone can afford to travel, but growing numbers of people across the globe are eagerly communicating online. The internet is an enormously popular, cost-effective, large-scale force that is used for good and bad purposes. The bad includes sowing disinformation, intolerance, and violence. The good though includes nurturing dialogue, learning, and collaboration that can open minds, nurture caring, and transform lives.
Learning Life is thus harnessing the power and potential of families and the internet to build an international family diplomacy movement online. In fall 2016, we launched Phase 1 of FDI by connecting lower-income families online in 
Washington DC, Puerto de la Libertad, El Salvador, and Dakar, Senegal. From 2017 to 2019, Learning Life completed two pilot projects — a community photo project and a food culture project — that engaged small numbers of lower-income families in the USA, El Salvador, Senegal and Jordan. In 2020 we completed a larger scale food culture project. In 2021, we more than quintupled the membership of FDI on Facebook, from less than 1,700 to over 10,000 people worldwide, and organized a series of live international dialogues on the question: “what do families worldwide need to be safe and healthy?” In 2022, we began Phase 2 of FDI, tapping into our growing global FDI network on Facebook to identify and begin training motivated Family Diplomats. Learn about our 2022 training’s impact. See the poster at the bottom of this page for FDI’s vision and three phases of development.
How You Can Get Involved
Here are five ways you can get involved and support FDI (click the links below that interest you to learn more and get involved):
(1) Join FDI on Facebook to connect, learn and share with families worldwide.
(2) Join our Democracy & Diplomacy Community to network, learn and support family diplomacy.
(3) Sponsor a Family Diplomat to support their international training. Meet some of our Family Diplomats here.
(4) Become a Family Diplomat (FD): Are you interested in connecting with others across the world to learn together and develop skills to become effective international advocates for families? Every Sunday for 1.5 hours in July-October, FDs worldwide participate in online training to become citizen diplomats able to advocate effectively for their family and other families facing similar issues. Learning Life is particularly interested in recruiting two or more FDs from the same family anywhere in the world who have a story to tell about an issue that affects their family, and many other families, from depression or discrimination, to war or climate change, and issues in between. Interested individuals and families can live anywhere in the world, but must (a) have a strong internet connection, (b) speak English well enough to participate in English-only FD trainings, and (c) be motivated to complete the July-October online training.
(5) Become a Family Diplomacy Ambassador (FDA): Are you connected to a lot of people in your country or internationally? Want to make international connections, and join a team of FDAs helping Learning Life recruit qualified family diplomats (FDs)? FDAs invest 4-6 hours per month to help recruit FDs, and meet periodically online with their fellow FDAs and Learning Life staff to report on progress in building our international FD corps.
(6) Intern with Learning Life: Want experience working for an innovative nonprofit in democracy, diplomacy and education? Learning Life interns are undergraduate or graduate students who typically volunteer about 10 hours/week for several months to gain resume-building international nonprofit experience as they assist with a variety of Learning Life tasks, including research, outreach, social media, fundraising, design, planning, and else. To apply for a Learning Life internship, please send along your resume to email@learninglife.info.
For More Information
Want to learn more about family diplomacy? Click here for a deeper dive. For sample recordings of FD trainings and family storytelling:
Training & Discussion on Global Family Trends, Patterns & Issues (July 24, 2022)
Training & Discussion on Diplomacy & Citizen Diplomacy (August 14, 2022)
International Family Storytellings (October 16, 2022)
For some of the thinking behind FDI, see:
Families: A New Voice for a More Caring World
Five Reasons Why Diplomacy Should Involve Families
Toward a Contextual Ethics of Diplomacy
