Impact

The Hollings Center designs its initiatives to create long-lasting impacts on participants and their communities. By creating an experience that shares knowledge and fosters understanding, the Center believes that connections made have impacted perspectives and created new opportunities.

Hollings Center Programs have demonstrated long-term impact through interpersonal connections and initiatives.

What our participants say...

The Hollings Center for International Dialogue is a refreshing departure from the typical Washington, DC based institute: it keeps a very low profile and regularly accomplishes exactly what it has set out to do. It does so by organizing small, private roundtables… [that] inculcate a sense of honesty and modesty among the participants that most international panels or conferences fail to capture.

American Participant

Multiple Dialogues

Perception change takes time, but this is the starting point. When we were coming we were in a different mentality. I would say it’s more than 50% changed. We learned a lot of new things here. We made so many good friends. I know each and every person can bring a positive change.

Pakistani Participant

Dialogue: Afghanistan-Pakistan Partnership Summit II

I spoke with a great deal of participants that challenged my thinking in a substantive way. What was of particular interest was the interaction I had that discussed the role of whether water is a public good or market commodity. My thinking has evolved due to this interaction.

American Participant

Dialogue: The Water, Energy, Food Nexus

The unique thing we had was [multi-sector representation] in the room at this dialogue. What happens usually is that NGOs sit in a corner and talk to each other, same with other sectors. We should all go back... with this mindset.

Participant

Dialogue: Social Integration through Entrepreneurship

This event provided an excellent combination of expertise, perspectives, and national experiences. I feel lucky to have participated in an event where the discussion was high quality, wide ranging and respectful.

UAE Participant

Dialogue: High and Dry - Addressing the Middle East Water Challenge

Small grants amplify the reach of dialogue conferences and produce creative, interesting partnerships

Hollings Center Small Grant projects are innovative and wide reaching. Here are some examples:

Two documentary filmmakers, a Palestinian and Egyptian living in New York and Los Angeles respectively, won a small grant to expand their animated documentary Sawt. Sawt, meaning “voice” in Arabic, is an oral narrative and animation documentary project highlighting the experiences of female activists in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and their role in the nation’s dramatic transition to democracy. With the grant, the grantees were able to go back on the Egyptian street one year after the revolution, this time talking to women about the 2012 presidential election.
A Hollings Center small grant supported the exploration of an exchange program between Concordia College in the United States and Independent University in Bangladesh (IUB). The grant resulted in several agreements for collaboration between the two universities beyond the original idea for a student exchange program. These partnerships included a research agreement to advance an asthma study between professors from each university, a detailed exchange and study abroad agreement and the possibility for Concordia faculty and students to use other field research facilities at IUB.
Two Hollings Center participants joined together for “Untold Stories: The Oral History of Afghanistan’s Cultural Heritage.” The two worked together to create an on-line repository of interviews from Afghanistan’s cultural heritage specialists and other stakeholders of cultural preservation in Afghanistan. These interviews were featured on the website of Kabul at Work and presented in Washington, D.C. at an event titled, “Afghanistan’s Cultural Institutions and Private Sector in the Shadow of 2014.”