What is Ibis?
Ibis Collaborative offers customized, facilitated programs for lifelong learners on current events, history, and major policy issues, emphasizing audience participation to build a more informed and connected community.
Ibis Collaborative: Engaging Minds, Building Community
Ibis Collaborative creates customized, facilitated programs for adults, focusing on current events, history, and major issues. We emphasize dialogue and learning to foster an informed and connected community. Guided by our principles of open-mindedness, social cohesion, and inclusion, we form and strengthen communities through ongoing, professionally facilitated conversations on a range of current events topics, domestic and global.
Our Approach: Community-Centered Learning
Our organizing principle is community. Safe communal spaces foster learning, belief sharing, introspection, and open dialogue, breaking down barriers. We serve independent living and senior groups, university alumni, and individuals with shared interests, among others. Communities choose the topics; Ibis handles the rest—creating agendas, providing logistics, professional facilitators, expert guests, and supplemental materials for robust discussions.
Our Impact: Intellectual and Social Enrichment
Ibis provides a thoughtful framework for social and intellectual engagement. Participants gain intellectual stimulation, community, learning, growth, and a renewed sense of purpose. We are committed to knowledge, fostering a thriving and resilient democracy, one community at a time.
Foundational Ibis Principles
Open-mindedness
Social cohesion
Social connections
Open-Mindedness
Knowledge is a continuous journey that requires openness to questioning beliefs and processing competing perspectives. True learning happens when we are open to new ideas, which fosters healthy debates essential to democracy. Opening one’s mind to ideas that contradict existing beliefs requires concerted effort. Ibis Collaborative provides a forum that encourages introspection, reflection, listening, and learning. We don’t seek to change opinions but to challenge people to think critically and learn from others.
Social Cohesion
Dialogue, understanding, and mutual trust are the glue that holds society together. Without these elements, society tends to fracture and polarize, driven by identity politics. These fractures hinder democratic processes and erode the social fabric. At Ibis Collaborative, we believe we share much more in common than what divides us. Discovering these commonalities requires effort—sometimes significant effort—and begins with actively forging mutual understanding. This means building empathy, engaging in conversations, and learning from others in a structured environment. Our goal is to foster greater common understanding and promote communities based on shared societal goals rather than tribal alliances.
Social Connections
US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has compared the mortality impact of social disconnection to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day, while an AARP study estimated that social isolation costs Medicare over $6.7 billion annually. Whether measured in lives or dollars, the cost of isolation is significant. Ibis Collaborative endeavors to create and strengthen bonds among friends and strangers alike,helping people build social bridges and personal connections across barriers that may otherwise divide us. We aim to combat social isolation by fostering lasting and meaningful relationships based on a shared passion for knowledge and discussion.