Listening for a Change works to achieve its Mission through four dynamic programs: The Neighborhood Listening Project, The Sonoma County Survivor Project, Essence of Acceptance, Community Listening Project, and Diversity & Inclusion. Each is a catalyst for change in achieving acceptance of diversity in our schools, neighborhoods and greater communities.

The Neighborhood Listening Project

The Neighborhood Listening Project is an oral history interview program for high school and junior high school students. Students cultivate oral history and active listening skills in preparation for interviewing successful adults who overcame difficulties, as well as “ordinary” neighbors and family members with stories to share. Listening for a Change staff collaborate with classroom teachers to guide students to choose interviewees from their community, prepare and ask thoughtful questions, and create meaningful narratives through editing decisions. Together, we forged community connections, developed empathy and created social capital. Click here to learn more and view the videos of oral history interviews conducted by students in Santa Rosa, Cloverdale, and Healdsburg.

The Sonoma County Survivor Project

The Sonoma County Survivor Project shares the dramatic stories and images of seemingly ordinary community members, including Japanese Americans, European Jews and Cambodians, who have survived severe loss of their human and civil rights. The exhibit is composed of present day photographs, informal portraits and reproductions of precious family documents, along with excerpts from oral history interviews. The exhibit's aim is to document neighbors' histories and celebrate the resiliency of their spirit, in the hope that an intimate acquaintance with these individuals will help us prevent similar episodes in the future.

The Sonoma County Survivor Project is an online exhibit and freestanding traveling show created by photographer, teacher, and Executive Director of Listening for a Change Phyllis Rosenfield and oral historian/computer scientist Lisa Slater. The exhibit of black and white photographic portraits combined with colorful observations of personal experience and the world today is extremely powerful alone. It can also be combined with our other programs, Essence of Acceptance and Community Listening Project.

Essence of Acceptance

Appropriate for all students, Essence of Acceptance uses the techniques of oral history and the arts to teach diversity awareness thereby promoting cultural understanding. Students are taught "empathic listening" skills to interview community members who have suffered human rights violations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights protections in the constitutions of various countries provide the academic framework for student exploration of the meaning of human rights.

Through trainings and consultations, social studies and language arts teachers receive instruction in teaching techniques and usage of curriculum materials. Community members from diverse cultural and ethnic groups share with the students their personal stories of discrimination and loss of human rights. Students are taught how to respectfully and formally record these oral histories and respond artistically to their experience to preserve and share the stories they hear. At the same time the students learn to apply lessons of the Holocaust and other instances of human rights abuse to current issues facing their community and the world. The students’ responses are then shared with the community at large in venues such as museums, libraries, schools, shopping centers and other public places. Essence of Acceptance has been successful in traditional public school classes, private schools, high academic classes, and has reached at-risk young people in Court, Community and Alternative schools.

~ Click here to Purchase Essence of Acceptance Curriculum or Individual Lessons Online! ~

Community Listening Project

Community Listening Project provides community groups with a human rights and diversity program to help heal fractures caused by socio-economic, racial and ethnic diversity and to forge a cohesive community identity. The Community Listening Project creates a deeper commitment to and acceptance of diversity among varying cultural groups. In addition, it promotes understanding across racial and age divisions and brings communities and families together in new and meaningful ways. Our goal is to help produce systemic long-term transformation that will foster community problem-solving and understanding.

The Community Listening Project makes community and cultural groups a focal point for change. Members of diverse community cultural groups, such as the Japanese American Citizens League, Mujeres Unidas and the Eritrean Community Center, are trained to take oral histories of members of other groups. In preparation for the oral history interviews, workshops are conducted on human rights and responsibilities as well as interviewing techniques. The oral history interviews are captured through photography, videotape and audiotape, and serve as a catalyst for further conversation among the groups. Resulting arts documentation is publicly displayed through radio, television, newspaper outlets, and other public venues.

Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity & Inclusion in the workplace merges LISTENING FOR A CHANGE'S mission of "promoting understanding and acceptance of human diversity" and the need for employees to learn active listening skills to interact more effectively within their own work culture and with clients, customers and patients served. Workshops are designed for business, government and nonprofit organizations, to help create a more diverse, accepting work community.