In the necessary work of digital peacebuilding, innovation isn’t confined to building new tools and products, but also includes the directive to use existing tools in new ways, reaching more and different audiences and creating new opportunities for collaboration and connection. In the example this article shares, the digital tools are video conferencing and a learning management system, both long-existing and currently ubiquitous. The process, however, is Virtual Exchange, where global education and digital peacebuilding meet to use ICTs to create opportunities for large-scale online dialogue and collaboration.

Over the past five years, the Sharing Perspectives Foundation (SPF) has innovatively used virtual exchange as an inclusive pedagogical approach to engage 10,000 participants from more than hundred countries in what has amounted to thousands of facilitated sessions in sustained online dialogue processes. When participants sign up for one of SPF’s open online courses i.e. ‘European Refuge(es),’ ‘Youth, Peace, and Security,’ ‘The Big Climate Movement,’ etc., they are arranged into small, intentionally diverse groups where they spend 5-10 weeks meeting weekly for two hour online facilitated dialogue sessions, engaging with expert content on the topic, and completing individual reflective and collaborative assignments. While students and young people are incentivized to sign up by the topical and educational value of the courses, the pedagogy of facilitating a group process through deep exchange leaves them with more: essential 21st-century skills such as cross-cultural communication and understanding, critical thinking, curiosity, and digital competencies.

The impact is a reduction of stereotypes and polarization as people gain a more open and empathic attitude towards others by learning to connect and communicate in a constructive and effective way. The means for arriving there is a new model of virtual exchange, and the digital tools are shaped to serve this process.

• “The most important thing that I learned through my participation in this virtual exchange is that no person, place, county, race, etc. has one single story.” Male, 26, Italy
• “I would definitely recommend others to take part in Virtual Exchange so they can break the stereotypes they see in the media and come connect with their fellows. The best part is that it was really diverse which has enriched conversation, it was like a conversation with the world.” Female, 23, Algeria

The needs for capacity building, new modes of collaboration, and facilitating sensitive conversations online are far-reaching. This is an area of peacebuilding practice that isn’t reliant on the latest technical innovations; the tools already exist. And as this example demonstrates, these digital tools can offer new possibilities for the process: scale, accessibility, diversity, reach, and more. How might you put existing platforms to use for your strategic objectives? What would ‘going virtual’ enable for you?