Public Forum Series Aimed at Developing Creative Strategies for Engaging Political, Cultural and Social Conflicts

Launching Monday on the Stanford Campus, SocialxDesign to Host Public Forum Series Aimed at Developing Creative Strategies for Engaging Political, Cultural and Social Conflicts

PALO ALTO, CALIF. — SocialxDesign — a social technology consulting firm with offices in Washington, DC and Silicon Valley — today announced that it will be launching a new global initiative called “Peace by Design” (PxD). Beginning with an interactive forum on Sept. 9 on behalf of the Sikh American community at Stanford University, the initiative will engage leaders around the world on co-creating strategies for engaging conflict across different geographic and political boundaries.

“The art and science of conflict engagement is rapidly evolving, and the time has come to more fully involve the public in the work of peacebuilding,” said Giovanni Rodriguez, co-founder of SocialxDesign. “Peace by Design will enable us to bring some of the world’s most pressing challenges and opportunities to public forums designed to accelerate the peacebuilding process.”

Safer Cities, Smarter Planet

Led by a team of researchers and practitioners who have designed and led some of the most successful citizen-empowerment projects to date, the initiative seeks to apply an empirical technology-driven approach to detecting and preventing violence and to build bridges between groups to increase positive social interaction. It also comes at a time when ‘peace technology’ is emerging as a market with both public and private financial support in strategic regions around the globe. A big focus of the initiative is conflict at the local level, and it is recruiting talent from a diverse array of innovators in citizen empowerment, community organizing, and advocacy.

“Increasingly, leaders in the field of conflict engagement are beginning to realize that all change needs to begin at the local level, regardless of the boundary of conflict,” said Toby Chaudhuri, co-founder SocialxDesign and head of the firm’s operations in Washington, DC. “By leveraging technology that enables leaders to scale engagement from the bottom up, we can reduce the time to impact significantly.”

The inaugural event for Peace by Design will convene a broad coalition of civil rights organizers and practitioners to co-design a scalable, technology-powered advocacy campaign on behalf of the Sikh American community, sponsored by the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF). Future events will include workshops and forums aimed at designing solutions to improve the social infrastructure in cities, to enable foreign ministries to foster citizen-to-citizen diplomacy, and to empower diaspora communities to develop more effectively. The events will be held in different cities with a range of partners in the expanding peace technology ecosystem.

“The goal is use the initiative as a catalyst for change, wherever change needs to happen,” said Rodriguez.

About SocialxDesign

We enable organizations to grow, reduce costs, and increase their market value by empowering the people they serve — employees, customers, and citizens. With a philosophical-yet-pragmatic approach to addressing new market realities — where empowerment is at the center of value creation — we’re helping businesses, government agencies and NGOs to remake themselves for the socially-networked economy.

With ties to leading social-technology research professionals at Stanford University and cutting-edge public affairs experts throughout the US, SocialxDesign is an independent firm with offices in Silicon Valley and Washington DC. Our clients include leaders in the private sector, the public sector and NGOs committed to rethinking their approach to consumer engagement.