World Cafe as a powerful agent for Peace

Of course the world cafe etiquette guides participants towards peaceful and benevolent behaviors.   It discourages binary  right/wrong argumentation and encourages the collaborative construction of knowledge. With the rotation from table to table, the cross-pollination of ideas and the harvesting of overall trends, individuals are invited to relinquish monopolistic ownership of "their idea" and quite naturally offer their insights into the common cauldron of creativity and innovation.   Surprisingly, at the end of the world cafe everyone is always very happy of the shared experience, of having reached the conclusions together, in harmony.   I have never heard anyone claiming "I said that, it was my idea!".

Accepting that our view is not the only truth, and that a common truth can be created through the overlap and layering of many individual views is a really powerful step towards conflict resolution and peace-building. This extraordinary result is offered by the very structure of the world cafe process and I believe that using this wonderful tool deliberately for the cause of peace at work, in communities and across countries can be very effective.

I have hosted world cafes only since the beginning of 2009 and the one common factor to all my experiences is that people come out of the world cafe with an array of very positive feelings and are usually able to implement whatever results emerged from the activity.  To sum it up: feel good and can do.   What a wonderful tool to run peace building conversations with !

I would be very interested in hearing experiences from other members of the community on the peace-building effect of The World Cafe. Thanks !