WILL YOU ANSWER THE
CALL TO CONNECTION?

Dear Friends,  

 

Who will we be to each other in this moment? Will we go back to old habits, or will we build something new, given everything we’ve experienced?

I’ve been wrestling these questions as we move into the next phase of life together. We have the opportunity to reflect on the impact a pandemic had on us – something that required us to isolate and distance ourselves from one another – and its effect on the shape of our lives. If we didn’t know before, we certainly know now: we need each other.



This month, I’m excited to share with you something big that we’ve been working on for some time: A Call to Connection: Rediscovering the Transformative Power of Relationships. This new primer seeks to ignite a national conversation about the power and possibility of social connection by demonstrating the benefits of becoming more deeply connected with each other as individuals, describing how connection contributes to our success as organizations and our collective wellbeing as a society, and offering practical guidance for how to do so now.

Alongside the primer, we’re excited to share reflections from numerous people who are answering the call already and inviting others to join them. Casper ter Kuile of Sacred Design Lab, and one of the primer’s authors, reflects on the process of its compilation. Linsey Morrison, a corporate leader at Eventbrite, explores the benefits each of us can gain from practicing connection and why it should matter to business leaders today. Our Building Lead Jonathan Gruber explains the different ways the primer can be useful to leaders across sectors. And our Bonding and Bridging Leads Ira Hillman and Itai Dinour reflect on the primer's significance for early childhood and youth development practitioners respectively.

We’ve also compiled a collection of resources specifically curated to help you go deeper in understanding and acting on the importance of connection in our lives. We hope you’ll join us and answer the call: download the primer, share it with friends using our social media toolkit, and try out connection practice #1: telling and listening to stories. When we share our personal stories and take the time to listen to others, we can see each other in a new light.

Together, we can create a healthy and thriving culture that prioritizes the relationships between us, and we can put this radically old technology of human connection to good use.

I hope you'll join us and answer the call,


Jenn Hoos Rothberg
Executive Director