“Today Amanda and I met at Starbucks for a lovely conversation. It lasted for 2.5 hours and would have gone on longer had one of us not needed to leave for another appointment. Thanks for the coffee!

My conversation partner was a very pleasant and interesting young woman. Our conversation was more than civil; it was respectful and caring. We learned quite a bit about each other’s personal histories. I felt I was listened to. I look forward to seeing her work, and meeting with her in the future.

Thank you for this opportunity. ”

“Jenna and I had a great conversation and despite our differences in age, race and voting choices we learned that we share remarkably similar viewpoints many areas. We’ve become friends on Facebook and plan to see each other again.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to make a new friend.”

“Super productive. She was extremely nice – and though we forgot about the guide, it went great. We both were very respectful. I would be open to chatting with another person as well again if there’s more people looking to chat... I gained a lot of perspective, which is good because empathy is something I lack for certain.”

“I just wanted to let you know that Michelle and I met yesterday and had a lovely conversation. It turned out that we had a lot of shared values. We also appreciated our fancy coffees. Thank you for organizing this!”

“I think our Hi From The Other Side conversation was a mutually beneficial interaction. As two young people who have invested a lot of time into understanding these issues, we were able to foster some common understanding. Sharing my own perspective felt great and hearing his only added to mine. ”

“We chatted for a long time. It was a healthy conversation, with someone I completely disagree with... I think it was important to have the conversation. We agreed to keep emailing and schedule another call in 6 weeks or so.
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“I wanted to thank you so much for starting this effort. I can’t tell you heartening I and many friends and family have found it. ... I was so happy to find out that Hi From The Other Side existed that I sent an email about it to many of my friends and family. I’ve gotten several enthusiastic responses.

I think your effort to help Americans listen to each other and build conversations across party lines is fantastic, and I thought you should know how well-received the idea has been among my friends and family.”

“My coffee with Jeanette was an overwhelming success! She was totally delightful, and we agreed that what we had in common was far more than our differences. I was fascinated by the fact that we had both been Bernie supporters in the primary but had gone in radically different directions. We talked for almost three hours.”

“I was astonished how similar our backgrounds were... We had an very civil conversation. I picked up a lot of information from Ben and understand better his beliefs. He’s a very good communicator! Hopefully he got something out of it as well. We agreed to keep in touch via email and hook back up by phone in six weeks.”

“The conversation went super well! We used a couple of the conversation guide topics as jumping off points, but we pretty easily branched off as both of us had plenty of questions we wanted to dive into. We talked for 80-90 minutes, and I think we both came away with some ideas to think about. Both of us seemed interested in catching up again sometime. Hopefully that works out!

Thank you for the work you do on this project. Part of our conversation was about how great of a concept it is!”

“As a Trump supporter who was not particularly vocal about expressing my support I was happy that this forum allowed for a civil way to converse with those on the other side about my support. I know there are others like me who would appreciate a program like this as well.”

“Everything I see in the news and my social feeds is ugliness and divisiveness. It was really refreshing to be able to sit face-to-face and find common ground with another mom like me who just happened to have different views on public policy. I highly recommend Hi From The Other Side to anyone who truly wants to better understand their fellow Americans.”

“I want to reiterate how grateful I am for this program. It was a great experience learning about each other’s lives and dreams, talking civilly about where we diverge, and finding surprising amounts of common ground.

Also, thanks for the question guide. We used it the whole time, and it was the perfect number of questions to allow us to get to know each other in one hour while staying mostly on topic but also having some time to diverge into subtopics.”

“Thanks, this is a great tool to help us all better understand the other side. We had a great hour and a half conversation. We both respected each others position. I would like to have more conversations with others from the ‘other side.’”