In 1992, Len and Libby Traubman invited American Palestinians and Jews to come together and begin a long term ‘dialogue’ to discover common ground, and learn about each other, creating what would become the long-running and very successful ‘Jewish Palestinian Living Room Dialogues‘. Since then the Traubmans have facilitated many other dialogue groups and multiple projects, including their latest, ‘Dialogue in Nigeria, Muslims and Christians Creating their Future’ a DVD available free around the world to any individual or organization who requests it. As part of a new series highlighting our users and their interesting stories and case studies that we will be publishing in the upcoming months, Mixonic talked to Libby and Len about their work, the concept of dialogue, and their latest DVD project. This is part two of our interview, to read part one, please click here.
Mixonic: What has the response been like from the individuals and organizations who’ve requested copies of your DVDs?
Libby: Well not everyone writes back and tells us of all those thousands of people but many write back and say how helpful the film was how it helped them to get their group started and that was really why we wanted to send the original VHS’s many years ago was Len started this website about our work and then people started writing and saying ‘I just found your website and I want to do what you do’ and that forced us to think about how we could communicate how you start a living room dialogue group and how you do these other activities and it forced us to start devising materials and then when the VHS, the MSNBC came in that was kind of the beginning, we could see the power of film and the power of getting materials in peoples’ hands and many, many, many have just kept us going with how they’ve started their own group, how much meaning it had for them, how inspired they are by somebody modeling the process and what’s possible. I’m sure Len, he keeps track of some of the better comments and I think some of the comments in fact are even on the website, you can see how people say they really appreciate somebody giving them the tools to do something on their own.
Mixonic: You also facilitate groups through Skype with your dialogue groups, how does that work?
Len: Well when we were invited to go to Africa we had met some people from Singapore at a conference here where we facilitated a smaller group at a service learning conference in San Jose and they said ‘could you come to Singapore and do that for our educators at the university?’ and we said ‘yes we could’ but then we needed to go to Africa and we thought well should we go to Singapore on our way home from Africa? This is a whole level of traveling that’s kind of new to us so it did not work out but we said ‘no but the day after we get home from Africa we could facilitate by Skype’ so we did a practice session with the teachers in a small room at the university and it was really great, it’s well documented it’s in photographs on our website, so we practiced and then later when they had the auditorium full of people for the big conference we did it for a whole auditorium of people when Libby and I sat here on this one screen together here on Skype and facilitated this very successful dialogue experience and then recently at our annual dialogue meeting in December we call it the ‘Season of Light Gathering’ we did it at a local restaurant and we had a good internet connection and on the screen just like we three are doing right now we had the whole dialogue here in a San Mateo restaurant, a gentleman in Gaza, a young man in Gaza in his home, using his battery power, because they had cut off electricity to Gaza, he was using battery power and a flash light to light his face, this is how much people want to connect, a young man in the West Bank and one of the African participants from our conference who is in Switzerland, she was on there, and then a young man in Israel, Tel Aviv and we were all on the screen in this global network of people who were determined to build relationships. So we used the internet in just the most creative ways that we can imagine and it really builds a heart connection not just an intellectual one with words.
Libby: And all of these activities, all of these links, all the films and the DVDs, everything we use really demonstrates how people want relationships and how interested most people really are in meeting somebody new and different and overcoming their fears and their doubts so it’s a fantastic process and it’s a beautiful way to live life to be able to connect with people unlike ourselves.
Len: It’s a choice of stories and we just have to find stories that matter, the regular media is full of human failures and we need to discover stories of choice about human successes and maximize those and replicate them around the earth so the use of the DVD especially because they can be mailed so well, and I’ll tell you another reason why the DVDs are important, because most people in the world do not have the internet so in Africa, the DVD is the way. Most of the world, it’s the way to pass stories forward other than face to face because even if they have internet, the electricity is intermittent and irregular and the internet connections are way too slow in most of the world for streaming. I think one of the insights here related to Mixonic is that DVDs are really the medium of choice to move story and art form and information around earth and especially into rural and developing countries.
Libby: We’re always telling people, we know so many people who are doing amazing work and we say ‘have you ever thought of making a little video about your work?’ and they say ‘oh no you know, I don’t know how I would do that it costs money’ so there are a lot of people we think could do something very inexpensively even with their own hand-held camera, or whatever, things don’t have to be high quality like for a professional film-showing to communicate a powerful message so they could easily do a little story on themselves and have Mixonic make copies of their story and get it out there. That’s how we did it for Abraham’s Vision because they’re a very small but important program and we felt like they weren’t telling their story.
Mixonic: Have you got anything else coming up for 2012?
Len: Our mission now is to get this film around the planet it’s already in 33 countries, just in the first month it was requested by 30 countries. And we’ve been invited back to facilitate at the Naval Post- Graduate school. Many military bases have asked for this film so something new is happening we think we may be defining a new kind of power and a new kind of security.
Mixonic: If someone wants a copy, they just contact you, tell you why they want it and you send it to them?
Len: We send it cost-free to anyone on the planet who will use it, in cities, in schools, on the streets for international community-building. Click here to request your copy of ‘Dialogue in Nigeria’
Stay tuned in the coming months for more profiles on our fascinating Mixonic customers and the way they are using Mixonic products to make things happen in their world. Like us on Facebook for the latest blog updates and for your chance to be our featured profile.
