Divided Community Project

Divided Community Project

The Divided Community Project (DCP) provides dispute resolution and systems-design expertise to help local community and university leaders enhance community resiliency and prepare for and respond to events that polarize their communities.  Winner of the American Bar Association’s Cooley Lawyer as a Problem Solver Award, the project helps strengthen local capacity to transform division into collaboration and progress.

Learn More

We live in extraordinary times: they are promising, yet contentious.  Feel free to use our Virtual Toolkit, just below, of guides, checklists, and even video interviews that might be helpful resources as you seek to help your community or university bridge differences.  Contact us directly if you think we might help.

Carl Smallwood
Executive Director, Divided Community Project

What We Do

The Divided Community Project offers resources, classes, and direct assistance to community and university leaders through several initiatives.

Symbols and Public Spaces Amid Division

A planning process can be most effective before conflicts over symbols divide people into opposing camps. By working proactively, leaders and others within a campus, city, region, or state – what we call here for simplicity a “community” – will also respond more constructively and collaboratively when conflicts over symbols or other divisive incidents occur. They will be able to draw on enhanced relationships and detailed plans created beforehand for responding quickly in a volatile situation.

Learn More
Speaking Out cover

Leading a Community During Times of Conflict

Preparation ahead of conflict matters. Communities that invest in building resilience are better equipped to navigate conflict.

This guide offers practical strategies to help local leaders strengthen community resilience and prepare for moments when conflict may escalate into crisis. It affirms the value of leaders modeling a constructive tone that does not dismiss differing viewpoints but welcomes them and fosters an atmosphere where their expression can occur safely and respectfully.

Each chapter of this guide outlines potential strategies and includes real world illustrations, tools leaders can use constructively during times of crisis and calm.

Learn More
Adobe Stock art image of people with their fists raised Adobe Stock art image of people with their fists raised

Resources for Leaders

The Divided Community Project’s Virtual Toolkit includes specific community engagement and conflict resolution strategies that local leaders and others can use to identify and address community division and its underlying causes.  We’ve categorized our guides, checklists, studies, video, and other resources under the following categories.

Are you ….