FRD’s Current Initiatives

Each of the following initiatives aims to fulfill the trust-building mission of FRD. Each of the first three will address different audiences to encourage engagement in Heart & Mind Conversations using The Way of Openness adapted to their situations. The fourth initiative seeks to facilitate creative inspiration and discovery as it improves trust-building among participants and produces new methods beyond FRD’s current repertoire.

1. Promoting with Online Media the Learning and Practice of Religious Diplomacy

2. Convening Private Heart & Mind Conversations in Religious Conflict Situations

3. Assisting Groups to Organize for On-going Engagement in Religious Diplomacy

4. Innovating New Ways for Building Trust between Ideological or Religious Rivals

Promoting Heart & Mind Diplomacy

+ FRD is promoting a novel attitude change: the desire for trusting openness to mutual influence between people with incompatible worldviews and value priorities.

+ FRD learned that such novel attitude change comes only through experience with adversaries that demonstrate their motives, competence, and character are trustworthy.

+ FRD promotes Heart & Mind Conversations and The Way of Openness to provide the novel experiences that build trusting attitudes that sustain peaceful tension in conflict.

+ FRD employs lecturing, written, and broadcast media to inspire and educate thought leaders, as well as religious, political, and cultural authorities to see how implementing Heart & Mind diplomacy education and engagement will yield peace amid respectful contestation.

Convening Heart & Mind Engagements

+ FRD will convene conferences and conversations between conflicting groups that desire to improve mutual trust without compromising their incompatible convictions.

+ FRD will facilitate Heart & Mind private conversations for individuals, families, and small groups facing conflicts over ideals, religion or value priorities.

+ FRD will seek to employ new techniques to facilitate Heart & Mind conversations that do not require third-party mediators or costly travel.

Assisting Formation of Religious Diplomacy Chapters

+ FRD has also developed a communication network between trustworthy representatives of diverse religious and ideological groups that desire to engage in trust-building known as FRD Chapters.

+ FRD Chapters under their own respective leadership each pursue activities and projects that meet their trust-building goals, using FRD methods.

+ FRD also assists new religious or ideological diplomats in forming FRD Chapters to engage in intra- and interreligious Heart & Mind Conversations within and between communities.

+ FRD is currently assisting possible leaders for Chapter representing Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism and more.

+ Contact FRD to learn about the existing Chapters or to learn how to develop a new one. See Guide for Developing Religious Diplomacy Chapters.

Innovating for Faster, Deeper Trust-building

+ FRD sees today’s global need to build trust quickly when inaccurate information as well as misinformation can go viral and cause disasters—especially when moral values and motives are called into question; and FRD’s novel trust-building methods address it.

+ FRD is exploring partnerships and fellowships with university research labs to develop technological ways to improve trust-building between adversaries, critics or rivals

+ FRD will employ AI assisted computer modeling of effective trust-building conversations that will inspire people to extend trust appropriately among ideological critics and rivals. Crucial to AI design is alignment—not of contested values, but of persuasion standards.  See FRD’s attached declaration Commitment to Ethical Persuasion.

For further discussion of our trust-building process, including background, method, and measurement of results, see the document FRD’s Trust-building Programs.