Practice Guide Resources

Getting Started

Use this page to go beyond the Building Together 2026 Practice Guide with recommendations for additional reading, meditations, and more.

Download a copy of our recommended read, Coming Together, Not Apart: Building the Hearts, Minds and Skills for Leading Across Differences, which introduces you to the heartset, mindset and skillset framework that is referenced throughout Building Together 2026. While you're at it, check out the full Coming Together, Not Apart publication series.

Resources

Day One | Monday, May 4

Day Two | Tuesday, May 5

Day Three | Wednesday, May 6

Day Four | Thursday, May 7

Key Concepts

Day One

Tapping into heartset, mindset, and skillset
Monday, May 4

Meditation

• Happiness Break: A Meditation on How to Be Your Best Self, With Justin Michael Williams 

Relevant Resources

• Coming Together, Not Apart publication series
• Communications Toolkit for Working Across Differences
• Assessing Your Inner BridgeBuilder

Day Two

Reflecting on what we're up against - and what we're working for
Tuesday, May 5

Meditation

• Happiness Break: A Meditation for Connecting in Polarized Times

Relevant Resources

• Kurt Gray
  • Research
  • Articles
• Dame Jacinda Ardern, Christchurch Call Foundation:  
  • The Christchurch Call Commitments of governments, online service providers, and civil society organizations  
  • Catalyst: Addressing Misogynistic Pathways to Violent Extremism
• Shamil Idriss, Search for Common Ground:
  • Driving Impact in Polarized Contexts: Insights & Recommendations for Philanthropy
  • Resources on Common Ground Leadership
• People’s Supper  
  • Explorations in Relational Grit: Field notes from the work of building community that can hold
  • TPS Playbook: Reweaving the Social Fabric
  • Discussion Cards 

Day Three

Asking, what can be changed? And what should be?
Wednesday, May 6

Meditation  

• Happiness Break: Finding Calm in Uncertainty

Relevant Resources  

• Building Together Award Winner, Innovia Foundation
  • From Charity Bank to Community Leader
• Samantha Moore-Berg
  • Exaggerated meta-perceptions predict intergroup hostility between American political partisans
  • Intergroup Contact Reduces Dehumanization and Meta Dehumanization
  • Megastudy testing 25 treatments to reduce antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity  
• One America Movement
  • Jerusalem Youth Chorus
  • Conversations about our broken system aren’t enough, Washington Post, 2018
  • Being Nice is Not Enough, Wayfare Magazine, 2025
  • One America Movement, Annual Report 2025
• Stop trying to 'educate' people into changing. Science proves it doesn't work. Fast Company, 2026
• An Unexpected Conversation, Multifaith Neighbors Network
• The Sister Act podcast with Dr. Sabrina Dent & Rabbi Susan Shankman

Day Four

Where do we go from here?  
Thursday, May 7  

Meditation  

• Loving Kindness Meditation – UCLA Mindful

Relevant Resources  

• Sohad Murrar
  • Exposure to peers’ pro-diversity attitudes increases inclusion and reduces the achievement gap
  • The Many Questions of Belonging
  • The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation
  • The Belonging Barometer
• Joey Clift
  • The Modern Family Effect: Pop Culture’s Role in the Gay-Marriage Revolution, The Atlantic, 2015
  • Gone Native. Animated comedy shorts.
• Adrian Molina
  • VIDEO: Vote Every Day
  • VIDEO: Future Town
  • An Invitation to a New Civic Future
• Eric Liu
  • Habits of Heart and Mind, AAAS report on fortifying civic culture
  • Live Like a Citizen, forthcoming book from Simon and Schuster

Key Concepts

Resources drawn upon to inform framing of the key concepts:  

• American Immigration Council
  • Belonging Barometer
  • Cultivating Contact
• Othering and Belonging Institute  
  • Bridging to Belonging Curriculum
  • Belonging Design Principles
• Caltech Center for Inclusion and Diversity, Building Common Ground workshop
• The Little Book of Conflict Transformation
• Resetting the Table Framework
• Rand, Designing and Measuring Civic Infrastructure
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Our Common Purpose, Recommendation 4.1
• Essential Partners, Dialogue Experience
• Carnegie Endowment for Peace