NEWS

The Centre is excited to announce Aftab Erfan as our new Executive Director! Aftab joins us in August 2023, after serving as the City of Vancouver’s inaugural Chief Equity Officer.

The Centre is excited to announce that Semester in Dialogue is back for the Fall of 2023! After a brief pause, we have redesigned our curriculum and are excited to bring back another semester of conversation that centers around communities, reciprocal learning and inner reflection and exploration.

Recapping CAMP 2023, a weekend where SFU students connected and conversed about dialogue in the great outdoors. We are so happy to hear about all that our CAMP participants learned and enjoyed this year.

We are honoured to celebrate Elodie Jacquet and Nicole Armos from our Knowledge and Practice team, who have received the 2023 Staff Achievement Award in Diversity and Inclusion!

The Centre is excited to showcase the 2023 Sylvester Family Award recipient, Jan Vinoya. Jan's commitment to racial equity, and social justice using tools of dialogue have been an extraordinary journey that we are honoured to highlight.

The Centre is thrilled that two of our Dialogue Fellows, Ginger Gosnell-Myers and Amina Yasin, have been nominated in the 2023 NWCA Women of Distinction Awards for their incredible contributions to our community.

Dialogue Fellow Diane Finegood has received an Excellence in Teaching award for her incredible work as an instructor in our Semester in Dialogue Program.

The 2022 Bruce and Lis Welch Community Dialogue, Facing the Flames, offered valuable insight and ideas on what it means to live with wildfire and the collaborative action that we need to manage it well.

What must we change about wildfire management now to thrive in the future? On Tuesday, December 6, SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue is facilitating a dialogue about the pressing and ever-changing issue of wildfire in BC.

The Centre's Cities and Climate Initiative and International Climate Engagement Network team is excited to go to COP27 and join the conversation on multi-level climate action and climate engagement.

Know a leader in your community who has consistently used dialogue to successfully increase mutual understanding and advance complex public issues? We want to learn more about them.

Join us on November 21st as we present our recommendations for Zero-Emission Retrofits to Burnaby City Council.

As we look back on the past year through our impact report, we reflect on the times we’ve convened communities, shared stories and used dialogue as a way to explore together and find common ground. Dialogue is not only a powerful way to share different perspectives, it provides the opportunity for people to come together and co-create the next best steps forward.

September 30th marks the second annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. It’s a day that symbolizes our responsibility to continually advance truth and reconciliation, both as individuals and as a community.

The Centre's program coordinator and Semester in Dialogue alum, Jocelyn Wong, plans and leads dialogue events on a large range of topics, including democracy, climate action and racial equity.

Students of the Semester in Dialogue go on to do great things with the skills and reflections they gain from the program. Learn about Rerooting Relationships, a civic engagement initiative created by two of our alumni.

Last year, SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue co-created impact in several areas of practice through strengthening connections with students, community and each other. As we launch our 2021/2022 impact report, we reflect how we have collaborated and learned from these connections.

The Year of the Salish Sea (YOSS) is a youth-led initiative that aims to bring together local First Nations, municipalities, organizations and individuals in the Salish Sea ecosystem region to strengthen existing efforts towards a healthier Salish Sea. Read more about their beginnings, their ideas and their plans for the future.

We recently published a Commemorative Book, where we celebrate our two decades, look back to the beginning of this journey and pay tribute to some of those involved in shaping our Centre and its programming.

In the midst of climate change, how do activists, marginalized communities, young people, and delegates at COP26 and around the world move forward in their work? How do we remain hopeful in the face of this incredibly emotional, mental and existential burden?

Semester in Dialogue alum, Jocelyn Wong, shares five of the most meaningful takeaways I’ve gained through being in community with this special individual. adrienne’s teachings.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Laurie Anderson has been appointed to the interim role of Executive Director of the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue as of April 4th and until a permanent Executive Director is recruited.

Brenda Tang our Associate Director wins 2021 Staff Achievement Award from SFU.

Add your voice to our national survey and share your views of the Centre, our goals, objectives and activities and win a $250 gift card to support a local organization or business of your choice.

Meet our new Dialogue Fellows! Dialogue Fellows partner with the Centre for Dialogue to lead initiatives that address issues of fundamental significance to our communities.

Social justice writer and facilitator adrienne maree brown is this year’s recipient of the Jack P. Blaney Award for Dialogue from Simon Fraser University's Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue (the Centre). adrienne is a writer, podcaster, facilitator, abolitionist and movement mediator who inspires communities to move collectively towards liberation, solidarity and change

From climate change and racism to income inequity and political disengagement, finding solutions to our most pressing issues requires space for everyone to be heard. Dialogue helps create that space. Through dialogue, seasoned professionals and engaged young people are shaping solutions to society’s complex issues. They are reimagining how we relate to each other and the issues at hand.

Meet our new Dialogue Associates! Dialogue Associates are active practitioners, educators and researchers who have demonstrated exceptional leadership in the fields of dialogue and engagement as well as strong alignment with the Centre’s values.

Citizen engagement is an opportunity to co-create solutions to many of today’s pressing issues. So, how do we–as organizations, governments and social movements–create meaningful citizen engagement? At SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, we’re all about advancing innovations in dialogue, and we’ve got a library of resources to help you out.

SFU Philosophy has partnered with the Centre’s Strengthening Canadian Democracy Initiative (the Initiative) to host the Canadian High School Ethics Bowl on November 27, 2021.

In a little over a week, SFU’s Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue will join thousands of delegates from around the world for the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, UK. It will be the 26th time the UN has convened the Conference of Parties (COP26) to address the climate emergency. Dialogue at COP26 will be integral to moving climate action towards net zero carbon emissions and keeping global temperature increase below 1.5°C.

Throughout this past year, the Centre for Dialogue has been focused on building a more inclusive, democratic and resilient society. To share some of the work we’ve done this past year, we put together an impact report.

From the unceded, traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, on which the SFU Vancouver campus and the SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre building are located, we respectfully acknowledge the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

What wicked problem inspires you to take action? The Semester in Dialogue: Navigating Complexity will allow students to explore what makes problems complex/wicked and offer you ideas to help navigate an increasingly complex future. Apply by November 1, 2021

On September 14th the Simon Fraser University Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue hosted a youth leader forum to discuss issues that have been identified to be pressing for youth. Youth leaders from the four major parties showed up to have a dialogue about issues that they each care about.

The SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue has won the National Research Project of the Year Award at the International Association of Public Participation North America Conference for the Beyond Inclusion guide.

How do the people who have dedicated themselves to doing the necessary work of improving Canada’s approach to criminal justice maintain hope?

Mental health, class discrimination, systemic racism, polarized politics, reconciliation, these are the problems that we are facing in the 21st century, just to name a few. They can feel overwhelmingly big, scary, adversarial, and filled with risk. More and more, units at the SFU Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue are asked to advise groups and individuals on how to work through big issues.

The future might seem uncertain, but one thing is certain, youth are engaged and have something to say about it. Youth-led activism has been a driving force this past year putting to rest any ideas about a “disengaged generation”. If you ask youth what their visions for the future look like, they have ideas.

Clean Energy Canada is leading the country’s transition to clean energy through deliberately convening stakeholders to connect on a human level, through conversation and dialogue.

Who hasn’t forgotten to unmute themselves when they started to speak only to hear someone say “Uh, are you on mute…?”, cupping their hand to their ear. Personally, I’ve literally evolved to exaggerating my facial expressions and laughing silently, so as not to add to the volume level. #ZoomBodyLanguage