The Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing ─ A Hopeful, Practical Approach to Dialogue

When conflicts become ingrained in communities, people lose hope. Dialogue is necessary but never sufficient, and often actions prove inadequate to produce substantial change. Even worse, chosen actions create more conflict because people have different lived experiences, priorities, and approaches to transformation. So what’s the story?

David Anderson Hooker’s Little Book of Transformative Community Conferencing offers a hopeful, accessible approach to dialogue that:

Integrates several practice approaches including restorative justice, peacebuilding, and arts;
Creates welcoming, non-divisive spaces for dialogue;
Names and maps complex conflicts such as racial tensions, religious divisions, environmental issues, and community development as it narrates simple stories;
Builds relationships and foundations for trust needed to support long-term community transformation projects; and
Results in the crafting of hopeful, future-oriented visions of community that can transform relationships, resource allocation, and structures in service of communities’ preferred narratives.

The Little Book Transformative Community Conferencing will prove valuable and timely to mediators, restorative justice practitioners, community organizers, as well as leaders of peacebuilding and change efforts. It presents an important, stand-alone process, serving as an excellent addition to study and practice of strategic peacebuilding, restorative justice, conflict transformation, trauma healing, and community organizing.

This book recognizes the complexity of conflict, choosing long-term solutions over inadequate, quick fixes. The Transformative Community Conferencing model emerges from the author’s 30 years of practice in contexts as diverse as South Sudan, Mississippi, Greensboro, North Carolina, Oakland, California, and Nassau, Bahamas.

David Anderson Hooker, PhD, JD, MDiv, is an independent practitioner and scholar with more than 30 years’ experience in conflict transformation, peacebuilding, and community organizing. Hooker has worked in family, organizational, community, and national contexts throughout Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and the US. He is co-author (with Amy Potter-Czjaikowski) ofTransforming Historical Harms (Eastern Mennonite University, 2012).