What Happened in 2023, and What’s Coming in 2024
This annual report shares Learning Life’s activities and accomplishments in 2023, from the return of our Democracy Dinners in person and the start of preparations for a first Democracy Festival in the Washington DC region, to new publications to help envision a metro-regional democracy community and a new video about Learning Life, to the incorporation of a new program, Citizen Diplomacy International, and the establishment of a new Advisory Council. 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 the report, I also share some pictures of our people and activities in 2023.
Democracy Learning Community (DLC)
Launched in June 2019 with our first Democracy Dinner, the DLC is an association of Washington, DC area individuals and organizations working to make democracy more fun and inclusive by connecting professionals, publics and policymakers via social events, products, services and spaces that nurture fun, learning, networking, collaboration and wider, deeper citizen participation.
In 2023, we held six Democracy Dinners, our 38th to our 43rd, one each in January, March, June, July, September and November in Washington DC, Alexandria, or Arlington, VA with diverse people from the DC region involved in democracy work at local to global levels. The Dinner in January was our second in person following the Covid Pandemic. With that January Dinner, Learning Life began shifting the conversation from broad discussion in 2019 to 2022 of the challenges and opportunities for democracy at local to global levels, to the development of a DLC in the DC area. The Dinner in September, in collaboration with the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College, focused on the theme “Democratize America,” with speakers discussing citizen assemblies, philanthropy, and “fierce civility” (Aruna Rao, shown in the event poster below, was unable to attend). The November Dinner turned discussion to plans for the first Democracy Festival in the DC region.
Via the DLC, Learning Life also published four articles in 2023 to help envision what a vibrant regional democracy community can look like. The first, “Toward Localizing International Relations,” published in August, stakes reasons, principles, stakeholders, a vision and steps for localizing international affairs, as part of a presentation I delivered at a Citizen Diplomacy International meeting in September. The second, “Democracy, Education and the Trump Voter,” co-written with intern Ma’Shayla Hearns, and published in September, critiques the three E’s (education, economics and exclusion) of education, and calls for three C’s (comprehension, civility and collaboration) through wider, more inclusive learning communities. The third, “Five Reasons to Support Democracy Festivals,” published in December, as the title indicates, makes a case for organizing local or regional democracy festivals. The fourth, “How Business Can Help Strengthen Democracy,” likewise published in December, offers a variety of ways businesses can and are helping to protect and advance democracy.
Family Diplomacy Initiative (FDI)
While our DLC work is local, our Family Diplomacy Initiative is global. In our increasingly interconnected yet divided and fractious world, FDI, launched in 2016, 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 policy-making for a more caring world.
In 2022, Learning Life began FDI Phase 2 (see the Family Diplomacy Vision poster at the bottom of the FDI page for Phase details), successfully launching our first family diplomat (FD) training. Occurring weekly on Sundays via Zoom from June to October 2022, the training had two parts. The first part developed trainees’ basic knowledge about citizen diplomacy, plus global family trends, patterns and issues. The second part had participants learning about then practicing family storytelling given storytelling’s importance to giving voice and power to ordinary people worldwide 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.
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