Answering the Call to Facilitate: What You’ll Gain from the Co-Creating Desired Futures Intensive

The Co-Creating Desired Futures (CCDF) Facilitation Intensive is a five-session online program designed for community organizers and changemakers who are ready to deepen their skills in dialogue, deliberation, and collaborative leadership. Taking place this fall, the intensive blends experiential learning with hands-on practice in facilitation approaches like Dynamic Facilitation and Empathy Circles. With a strong focus on equity, care, and collective wisdom, CCDF offers a nurturing space to grow the capacity needed for transformational community work. Offered at a sliding-scale rate with scholarship support, this program embodies NCDD’s values of inclusion, accessibility, and strengthening democracy from the ground up. Read more in the blog post below.

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As we collectively strive to deepen democracy and cultivate inclusive, resilient communities, the need for thoughtful, human-centered facilitation is more pressing than ever. This fall, a unique opportunity is emerging that aligns deeply with the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation’s (NCDD) mission to support meaningful dialogue, deliberation, and collaborative civic engagement.

The Co-Creating Desired Futures (CCDF) Facilitation Intensive offers a five-session online learning journey from September 26 to November 21, 2025, designed to nurture the next generation of facilitators and changemakers. With its small-group format and emphasis on experiential learning, this intensive provides fertile ground for growing the skills and mindsets essential to leading with compassion, curiosity, and courage.

A Practice Ground for Deep Listening and Transformative Facilitation

At the heart of the CCDF Facilitation Intensive is a commitment to process as both a tool and a teacher. Participants will engage in practices that support authentic presence, deep listening, and creative collaboration—core capacities for anyone seeking to guide groups through complexity and polarization.

The journey blends immersive participation with hands-on facilitation practice, all held within a carefully cultivated environment of trust and care. Participants will explore Dynamic Facilitation and Empathy Circles—two approaches that invite divergent perspectives and support the emergence of shared meaning and new possibilities. Guided by a skilled lead facilitator and two apprentices, this intimate learning cohort will co-create an ecosystem where reflection, feedback, and growth are integral to the experience.
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Each session builds on the last, moving through the arc of inquiry, divergence, and convergence. Through collaborative problem exploration, practical facilitation exercises, and structured reflection, participants not only learn techniques—they embody the values that make facilitation a force for equity, connection, and transformation.

Equipping Organizers and Activists with Accessible Tools

In the spirit of accessibility and solidarity, CCDF offers this professional-quality training at a significantly reduced rate—$300–$400 on a sliding scale—specifically for community organizers and activists. Partial scholarships are also available. Rather than transactional training, this is an investment in the individuals and grassroots networks shaping more just and inclusive futures.
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While rooted in rigorous facilitation frameworks, the CCDF approach honors the lived wisdom that each participant brings. This inclusive orientation mirrors NCDD’s ethos: that effective dialogue begins with relationships, and that every voice has value in the co-creation of community solutions.

Building Capacity for a More Just and Collaborative Future

The CCDF Facilitation Intensive is more than a training; it is a space of transformation—for individuals, and by extension, the communities they serve. Participants leave not only with new tools and frameworks but with the confidence and clarity to facilitate spaces where creativity, care, and collaboration thrive.

This program exemplifies the kind of leadership development NCDD seeks to elevate—one grounded in equity, humility, and the power of collective wisdom. For anyone committed to bridging divides, navigating complexity, and holding space for change, this learning journey offers both the practice and the community to sustain the work ahead.
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Learn more and apply today at: https://www.co-creatingdesiredfutures.net/​