World in Conversation co-founders offer matching funds challenge

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — What started as a tiny extra-curricular project with seven undergraduates has become the largest university-based, cross-cultural dialogue center in the United States. World in Conversation (WinC), a center for public diplomacy, is housed in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts, but it engages people across the University and around the world.  WinC offers dialogue programming for 20,000 participants from nine colleges at University Park and nine countries, as well as tailored programs for campus and community groups upon request.

Co-founded by spouses Laurie Mulvey, clinical professor in sociology, and Sam Richards, teaching professor in sociology, WinC trains student facilitators to use dialogue as a tool to enable people on opposing sides of an issue to build solutions together.

“All we have to do is look at all the problems around us and the combative stances between interest groups to see how much we need facilitators,” Mulvey explained. “We don’t build the world with our friends. We build it with our opponents, so we need intentionally designed, ideologically neutral spaces to address the polarization and impasse that inevitably occurs between these groups.”

Richards added, “Ultimately, people with different perspectives and priorities have to realize that they actually need each other. We can’t solve a problem when we only see part of it. Conservatives and liberals, for example, see different parts of issues. All of those parts are necessary to see the whole problem and create practical solutions.”

Originally funded with a small seed grant from two alumni, Richards explained, WinC has been supported over the years by the Office of the President, the College of the Liberal Arts, the Office of Educational Equity and “a patchwork” of funding from other Penn State sources. The center currently has 32 paid staff members and offers an undergraduate certificate called “Facilitating Conflict and Collaboration,” which requires three semesters of intensive, hands-on training.

Despite its more than 20-year history, World in Conversation has never had an endowment to ensure its future — something Richards and Mulvey hope to change.

“I always said I wouldn’t give money to World in Conversation because I instead dedicated my life to it,” Mulvey admitted. “But as I was working with our alumni development committee this past year, I saw that what World in Conversation needs now is donors and champions who recognize this transformational vision and want to invest in it. And I thought it should start with Sam and me.”

That shift in thinking led the couple to use their future estate to help create an endowment to ensure the center’s future. A $25,000 bequest from Mulvey and Richards will support the “Fund for a World in Conversation,” and they have promised additional support from their estate as an incentive for others to contribute in order to activate the endowment. If $25,000 in gifts from the Penn State community is received by Oct. 31, 2023, allowing the fund to begin generating annual income, the couple will commit an additional $25,000 bequest to match those gifts.

“We are looking for supporters who see that when we try to address problems in echo chambers, we cannot build solutions. With partnerships around the world and decades of research in group conflict, it is clear to me that society’s well-being rests on the ability of opponents to collaborate," said Mulvey.

“This isn’t the Sam and Laurie show,” Richards concluded. “We have been building the center with the explicit understanding that we won’t always be here. The purpose of this endowment is to sustain the work and grow the impact of WinC to allow it to continue to do controversial — and crucial — work.”

Contribute to the Fund for a World in Conversation by visiting this link or contacting Geoff Halberstadt, senior director of development in the College of the Liberal Arts, at glh5028@psu.edu. Visit the World in Conversation website to learn more about the center.

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