SINGA Deutschland challenges traditional integration models by centering dignity, agency, and mutual benefit. Their work shifts the narrative from "helping refugees" to building a shared future, offering a scalable model of civic inclusion that bridges divides and expands the circle of human concern.

This brief explores the growing field of “bridging”—bringing people together across lines of difference to foster curiosity, trust, and social cohesion—and presents compelling evidence that bridging efforts measurably improve attitudes, empathy, and readiness to collaborate across divisions.

In a moment of deep cultural and personal reflection, writer and activist adrienne maree brown invites us into The Hope Portal — a moving audio and written journal hosted by On Being. This series is an intimate exploration of grief, possibility, imagination, and transformation. Through poetic insight and grounded wisdom, adrienne guides listeners into deeper questions about what it means to hope, heal, and build a more loving world — together.

Seth Kaplan’s Fragile Neighborhoods makes a powerful case that some of our biggest national challenges — disconnection, distrust, division — are playing out most clearly in our neighborhoods. And more importantly, that these same neighborhoods hold the answers we’ve been searching for.

He doesn’t offer quick fixes. Instead, he invites us to zoom in — to the street, the school, the church, the local nonprofit — and ask: How strong are the relationships here? Who feels seen? Who’s left out? It’s a deeply human approach that resonates with everything we’re trying to do at The Change Lab.

The Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley advances groundbreaking research, policy, and ideas that examine and remediate the processes of exclusion, marginalization, and structural inequality—what we call othering—in order to build a world based on inclusion, fairness, justice, and care for the earth—what we call belonging.