Bridger's Roundtable with Miriam and Wazhma (May 28, 2025)

Bridger’s Roundtable with Forum’s Head of Research Miriam Juan-Torres Gonzalez and peacebuilder and WASL member Wazhma Frogh, Founder and Director of Wellness, Prosperity, Socio-Empowerment Organization (WPSO) in Afghanistan.

This Roundtable will bring together members of the Forum network and ICAN’s Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) to discuss the global backlash against gender, accelerated most recently by the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID and its freeze on development funding. Campaigns targeting “gender ideology” are used to undermine democracy and consolidate authoritarian control, frequently under the guise of defending "traditional family values." These anti-gender campaigns function as a flexible, adaptable toolkit that can be tailored to fit local agendas, enabling them to resonate within a variety of cultural and political contexts. A stark example of this can be seen in Afghanistan, where institutionalized gender-based violence oppression has restricted women’s participation in public life and galvanized advocacy efforts to codify gender apartheid in international law.  

Bridger's Roundtable with Christiana and Abir (March 26, 2025)

Bridger’s Roundtable with Forum bridger Christiana Bukalo, founder of Statefree in Germany, and peacebuilder Abir Haj Ibrahim, Founder of the Mobaderoon Network, from Syria, member of the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL).  

Bridgers and peacebuilders share the challenge of addressing personal identity and power dynamics in their work. They must recognize how their own identity affects their positionality in engaging across lines of difference. They may face threats and resistance from different groups, including their own, when working to foster peace and belonging. We hope that you can join us for this discussion to reflect on key questions including: 

  • If you come from an identity of power or dominance, how can you engage constructively in bridging or peacebuilding efforts?  

  • If you come from a more marginalized identity, how do you protect yourself when engaging across difference? 

  • How might we build more expansive identities that allow for bridging and connection between individuals, while still recognizing differences in power inherent in group identities? 

Bridger's Roundtable with Sanam (January 28, 2025)

Join the Forum and International Civil Society Action Network (ICAN) for a special edition of our Bridger’s Roundtable with Forum advisory board member and ICAN founder Sanam Naraghi Anderlini. This Roundtable brings together members of the Forum network with members of ICAN’s Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership for conversation and reflection around what bridgers and peacebuilders working in different contexts and across distinct lines of difference can learn from one another. 

Bridgers' Roundtable with Weronika Czyżewska-Poncyljusz (Oct 1, 2024)

Weronika Czyźewska-Poncyljusz, Director of International Programs at the Poland-based Borderland Foundation. Since 2011, Weronika has coordinated the Foundation’s International Center For Dialogue in Krasnogruda, at the border of Poland and Lithuania. The Center aims to create and disseminate new forms of art and intercultural education, train leaders in Central and Eastern Europe in practices of bridging, and promote intercultural dialogue through programs like the Borderland School, Tales of Coexistence, Invisible Bridge, Borderland/Belarus, Borderland/Ukraine, and more. Her research activities involve themes of social engagement of art and education, memory studies, intercultural dialogue, and local community development

Bridgers' Roundtable with Dimi Reider (Apr. 11, 2024)

 Dimi Reider, Israeli journalist and facilitator. He is a co-founder of +972 Magazine, a Palestinian-Israeli media collective and the only media outlet in the country run jointly by journalists from the two communities. Dimi has written for The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books, among others; and has translated a number of important books on the conflict from Hebrew to English, including Yehuda Shenhav’s “Beyond the Two State Solution” (2012) and Noga Kadman “Erased from Space and Consciousness” (2015). He also has worked on sharing learnings between Israel-Palestine and Northern Ireland since 2008.

Bridgers' Roundtable with Bart Bailey (Mar 27, 2024)

Bart Bailey, founder and principal consultant of Courage to Care who leverages his corporate and lived experience of creating success with his ability to connect to the heart of the matter to ignite change with individuals, teams, and communities. In this Roundtable, Bart shares his experiences as a bridger in the corporate field and guides us through a group reflection that explores what our relationships to violence, identity, authenticity, and community mean for our capacities to bridge.