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The website CrossingtheTribalDivide.com was recently launched to encourage open, honest dialogues among individuals and groups who may be strangers to each other, and therefore have preconceptions that could otherwise lead to bias and prejudice. Crossing the Tribal Divide focuses on storyteller and facilitator Sally Wiener Grotta who leads interesting, enlivening discussions and workshops for organizations, schools, conferences and companies, to help diverse groups seek mutual understanding and inspiration.
As Ms. Grotta explained, “How natural it is for all of us to feel safe and comfortable with people who look, sound and think like us. But that cocoon-like existence is static and sterile, offering us scant stimulus for growth as individuals, a community and an economy. It’s similar to pulling a cart along a well-worn, rutted path, or living with blinders on, so we can’t see the wide world around us. However, when we listen to each other’s stories, try to view problems and potential solutions from another’s novel perspective, and even allow a stranger to lead us down an unknown path, the creative synthesis can yield wondrous, unexpected opportunities – and the great fun of a new human adventure. Where once there were only status quo dead-ends, together we can now create a fertile landscape for fresh, original ideas, new life patterns and relationships, and even innovative products and services.”
PROGRAMS AVAILABLE
While every program is customized for the needs and interests of each specific group, here are a few examples:
Building a Richer Society: A healthy, growing economy requires creative problem solving, innovative development, and being open to new ideas and new ways of thinking. Learn to mine the wealth of diversity to ensure a rosy financial future.
Reaching Across the Ethnic/Racial Divide: An interactive workshop exploring methods to use when approaching strangers, and how to make connections when walls exist between people.
Breaking the Rules of Modern Tribalism: What are individuals and a society missing when they follow only familiar pathways and stick to their own kind? What are the advantages of breaking the rules of modern tribalism, and what are effective keys for starting the process?
ABOUT SALLY WIENER GROTTA
Sally Wiener Grotta is the consummate storyteller, reflecting her deep humanism and appreciation for the poignancy of life. With her wide-ranging knowledge, and her lively, personable style, Sally inspires her audiences to tap into their own creativity, to ask themselves questions they might not have considered previously, and to seek new solutions together.
Sally is an award-winning journalist, author and speaker, who has traveled on assignment to all seven continents (including three times in Antarctica) and many exotic islands (such as Papua New Guinea and Devil’s Island). Having experienced and written about a wide diversity of cultures and traditions, Sally flavors her presentations with fascinating and relevant anecdotes plus a healthy dose of common sense. Her audiences find themselves captivated and thoroughly entertained, while being drawn into meaningful open, honest discussions about creative thinking and the nature of bias and prejudice.
She has appeared throughout North America at a wide variety of venues, including schools and universities, corporate meetings and non-profit organizations, conferences and trade shows, book clubs and libraries, as well as on radio and TV. Sally is the author of numerous books and many hundreds of essays, stories and reviews that have appeared in scores of magazines and journals. Her novels Jo Joe (a Jewish Book Council Network Book) and The Winter Boy (a 2015 Locus Award nominee) have been lauded not only for her masterful storytelling, but also for their meaningful, provocative themes that generate discussions on preconceptions, bias, prejudice and the source of hate and war.
Contact Sally Wiener Grotta to arrange to chat about customizing a lecture, discussion group or workshop for an organization, company, school or conference.
Release ID: 140638