At a time of ​renewed global ​conflict and crisis, Developing Across Borders welcomes participants to an international, weekly, online group. Participants ​join this unique group-building activity for​ many reasons: ​ Juan S. from Ecuador, came in the throes of ​marital crisis​; Milo P. from Serbia joined after battling depression and despair and unable to find a job in his field; Mary T. from Oregon was looking for how to write the next chapter of her life after her kids left for college; Lilliana G. in Mexico, founder of a support group for families of incarcerated relatives, sought support to grow as a more confident, worldly leader.

Stuck, hopeless, at a crossroads, ambitiously searching for support to keep growing, they discover their capacity to build community in a Developing Across Borders group. They encounter people from different cultures, economic backgrounds and of different generations who are grappling with natural disaster, ​civil war, or​ an authoritarian political environment​ — and still others — grassroots activists — involved in community-based theater, peer support groups, or youth development projects in their communities.

The Developing Across Borders group – designed and developed beginning in 2010 by Institute emerita faculty Barbara Silverman — is a uniquely international, intergenerational group environment. Participants learn to see and build with others “not like me!” Bringing their varied histories, life circumstances and cultural differences, they create conversation where new meanings can emerge. Many become more responsive and responsible as “world citizens” and change agents.

With the support of a skilled social therapeutic coach, they build space​s — development zone​s — to play and perform with the diversity of their languages; speak more honestly, actively and directly; invent new ways of being and seeing — and in so doing, produce new possibilities for themselves and their communities and transform their emotional pain.

Join a Developing Across Borders group led by a social therapeutic coach!

• ​Grow “a head taller,” stretching to become more cosmopolitan – more relationally adept — at seeing and building with others “not like me!”
• Learn to create with crisis and loss — divorce and separation, death of loved ones, leadership challenges, violence, war​ and social instability.
• Create a play / performance​ space to expand how to look, listen, be emotionally responsive.
• Experience becoming more group conscious — performing new emotions, new rituals, traditions, ways of speaking, being and seeing, extend solidarity and support.
• Reignite the collective capacity to creatively invent / perform environments for growing oneself & growing our troubled world.

Online Developing Across Borders groups led by Melissa Meyer, Aurelie Harp and Lea Cikos are currently enrolling, with varied scheduling to accommodate participants in different time zones.  For more information, contact Melissa at mmeyer@eastsideinstitute.org.