Essential Partners, Inc.

Imagine a school where conversations about tough topics are robust but respectful, where different views are not only accepted but invited, where strong cohesion bolsters resilience in the midst of conflict, and students excel academically while learning vital 21st Century leadership skills.

For 30 years, we have worked with communities around the globe to build trust, understanding, and relationships across differences. With public and private schools, districts, educators, students, administrators, and parents, we have helped to create more inclusive and resilient school cultures that prepare the next generation of leaders for a diverse, interconnected world.

We have collaborated with schools in Massachusetts, California, New York, Texas, North Carolina, and Wyoming, empowering students, teachers, and administrators with the skills to lead richer classroom discussions, create a more open, inclusive school environment, and transform their schools’ culture.

In the classroom and throughout the school, our approach also supports social-emotional learning targets. It aligns with trauma-informed classroom practices and it is shown to improve students’ engagement, learning outcomes, and sense of belonging.

EP is currently seeking to expand our work in secondary and middle schools, and welcomes new ideas for partnerships, connections to new funders who can support our work in schools, and new advocates to help spread the word.

To learn more about our secondary school and middle school partnerships, please visit: https://whatisessential.org/work-with/secondary-middle-schools

Cities, towns, and neighborhoods face potentially explosive challenges year after year. These might be conflicts around major national topics like policing, complex local issues like housing development, or a small question about public parks that reveals underlying conflicts.

Essential Partners equips civic leaders, organizers, advocates, and community members with the tools to navigate polarizing differences. Our civic and community partnerships are designed to build capacity of civic organizations to talk about and engage across differences—whether by leading more inclusive public engagements, navigating a strategic planning process, convening diverse groups around divisive issues, or by proactively investing in more equitable, inclusive, pluralistic approaches to community-building.

EP equips civic institutions and local leaders to better serve their communities while advancing their vision. All collaborations are tailored to meet the needs of the local context. To learn more about our civic and community partnerships and capacity-building initiatives, please visit: https://whatisessential.org/civic-community

Workplaces assemble diverse groups of people in situations where consequential decision need to be made efficiently, leaders require trust to succeed, and teams have to work collaboratively to produce the best results. How we communicate often has as much impact as what we communicate. Processes matter, and so does institutional culture.

Essential Partners' approach helps foster a more inclusive environment where coworkers can engage differences without dysfunction. Our model generates more cohesive teams, helps employees navigate polarizing differences, improves communication, and makes decision-making processes more effective.

Refined over thirty years, EP's approach produces measurable outcomes, including:

Improved team cohesion
Greater trust across differences
Mutual understanding of opposing views
More effective, lasting collective actions

To learn more about our approach to dialogue and cultural transformations in organizational life and the workplace, please visit: https://whatisessential.org/workplace-organizations

Faith institutions play a leading role in public conversations across a wide range of social and political issues—such as abortion, immigration, the environment, and civil rights. They also serve members of the wider communities in which they're embedded, from feeding the hungry to sheltering those in need.

How can we bring faith values into public life? How can we engage diverse populations with openness, honesty, and dignity? How does a faith institution best realize its mission in the larger world? How can we cultivate robust, meaningful connections between diverse faith communities?

The answer is often found in community conversations. Essential Partners supports community engagements that create trust, understanding, and connection, even across deep divides. We can help design conversations foster depth and nuance, inclusion and conviction. For 30+ years we have partnered with a vast array of faith-based and interfaith groups to build lasting trust, understanding, and connection.

To learn more about our interfaith partnerships, and stories about the incredible impacts of this work, please visit: https://whatisessential.org/faith-religious

From Indonesia to Spain, Northern Ireland to Burundi, Venezuela to Australia, Essential Partners has helped leaders, communities, and institutions across the globe foster trust, understanding, and connection across differences of values, views, and identities.

EP’s trademark approach has been refined over thirty years. Collaborations with EP produce measurable outcomes, including:

Improved social cohesion
Repaired trust across differences
Mutual understanding of opposing views
More effective, lasting collective actions

In some cases, one or more local leaders trained with Essential Partners in the United States and then brought their skills home. Our partner in Venezuela, for example, attended a training in the U.S. Upon his return, he has led dialogues on controversial social topics in the unstable nation with EP’s ongoing support.

In other cases, our partner downloaded EP’s essential guide to dialogue across divides and then reached out for design consultation and coaching. That happened in Northern Ireland, where EP provided design and coaching for a rural community engagement initiative focused on conflicts over renewable energy developments.

And in still other cases, an experienced EP practitioner travels to lead in-person trainings, help co-design processes, and provide coaching. Our practitioners have traveled to communities in places like Turkey, Jordan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria, Liberia, Finland, and Australia.

To learn more about our international programs and partnerships, please visit: https://whatisessential.org/international