Listen. Connect. Understand. Act Together.
Breaking Bread Together brings people across communities, experiences, beliefs, and perspectives to a shared table—creating space to listen more deeply, understand what matters, and discover what may be possible together.
ABOUT BREAKING BREAD TOGETHER
A shared table. A better way to understand what a community is carrying.
Breaking Bread Together is a national listening and community dialogue initiative designed to bring people together across difference around the issues, opportunities, and questions that matter where they live.
Each gathering combines a shared meal with facilitated conversation, reflection, and collective sensemaking. Participants are invited to bring their lived experience, listen beyond their usual circles, and explore the tensions, hopes, concerns, and possibilities present in their community.
The purpose is not to arrive with predetermined answers. It is to create the conditions for communities to hear themselves more clearly, surface what may otherwise remain unseen, and identify what may be worth carrying forward.
Through the Dialogue Reflection System® and Multarity Thinking®, insights emerging across the room can be gathered and synthesized so participants and organizers can see larger patterns, meaningful differences, shared concerns, and possibilities for action.
Local conversations. Shared learning. Civic intelligence that can move communities forward.
DAVID BEASLEY
The invitation behind Breaking Bread Together
Governor David Beasley has spent much of his career working across lines of political, cultural, religious, and national difference.
He served as Governor of South Carolina and later as Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, where he led the world’s largest humanitarian organization through some of the most complex crises in the world. In 2020, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on the organization’s behalf. He is also a recipient of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
Again and again, his work has reinforced a simple idea: meaningful progress often begins when people are willing to sit together, listen beyond assumptions, and recognize one another’s humanity.
Breaking Bread Together brings that invitation home to communities across America.
Governor Beasley joins gatherings as a convener and listener, offering opening and closing reflections while local communities remain at the center of the conversation.
UPCOMING GATHERINGS / CALENDAR
Breaking Bread Together Across the Country
Every Breaking Bread Together gathering is shaped by the people, relationships, and questions of the community hosting it.
Explore upcoming gatherings across the country, including conversations focused on economic opportunity, hunger and food access, political difference, multiculturalism, youth violence, digital exploitation, community safety, and other issues communities are navigating together.
Use the calendar below to explore upcoming events, locations, and local themes.
Cleveland, OH
Strategic Non-Violence Academy
Inclusive Economic DevelopmentSept. 16thDinnerHarlem, NYMission New YorkRole of Faith Community in ImmigrationOct. 1DinnerIndianapolis, INShepherd CommunityHunger/Food DesertsOct 6th, Oct. 7thDinner, BreakfastKansas City, KSNazarene Theological SeminaryPolarizationOct. 26thNashville, TN510 FoundationMulti-culturalismOct. 29
Participated in a gathering? Select your community below to revisit the conversation and explore what emerged.
Breaking Bread Together
Explore the Conversations
Each community enters Breaking Bread Together through a different question.
Select a gathering to learn more about the local context, the focus of the conversation, and what the community explored together.
For completed gatherings, a public overview will highlight the larger themes and questions that emerged. Participants may also access the more detailed reflection materials associated with their gathering.
SEPTEMBER 16, 2026
Cleveland, Ohio
Inclusive Economic Development
OCTOBER 16, 2026
Salt Lake City, Utah
Digital Exploitation, Pornography,
& Sex Trafficking
OCTOBER 1, 2026
Harlem, New York
Role of Faith Community in Immigration
OCTOBER 29, 2026
Nashville, Tennesee
Multi-culturalism
OCTOBER 6 & 7, 2026
Indianapolis, Indiana
Hunger & Food Deserts
OCTOBER 21-23, 2026
Chicago, Illinois
Youth Violence Prevention
OCTOBER 26, 2026
Kansas City, Kansas
Polarization
OCTOBER 29, 2026
Michigan
Hate-fueled/political violence
Bringing Breaking Bread Together to Your Community?
Hosting a meaningful community conversation requires more than putting people in a room.
The Event Planning Resource Center gives local hosts practical tools for preparing the people, partnerships, space, hospitality, communication, and technology that support a strong Breaking Bread Together experience.
Registered hosts receive complimentary access to resources including:
the Breaking Bread Together Host Toolkit
event planning worksheets and readiness tools
invitation and communication templates
editable event flyers and promotional materials
Table Host / Facilitator preparation resources
participant and consent materials
room, technology, meal, and accessibility planning tools
post-gathering and Carry Forward resources
These materials are designed to give communities a strong shared architecture while leaving room for each gathering to reflect its own place, people, and needs.
Access to the Event Planning Resource Center is free for registered Breaking Bread Together hosts.
Start a Conversation
Could Breaking Bread Together Serve Your Community?
Every community is carrying something worth understanding more deeply.
You may be navigating an important local decision, a persistent tension, an emerging opportunity, or simply recognizing that people who share a community are not hearing enough from one another.
If you are interested in bringing Breaking Bread Together to your community, tell us a little about what is happening where you live and what you hope a gathering might make possible.
There is no need to have the experience fully designed. Start with the question, issue, opportunity, or relationship that has you thinking people should come to the table.