This Tallahassee Believes, a project that invites residents to explore the core values and beliefs that shape their lives, is now being featured by This I Believe International.

The Tallahassee project was just launched by the Village Square, a Knight Community Information Challenge winner supported by the Community Foundation of North Florida.

The Village Square aims to promote civil dialogue about the issues of the day. This Tallahassee Believes, based on the 1950s radio series hosted by Edward R. Murrow, fits that goal well.

Participants are invited to write and share essays about their beliefs and values.

As the Village Square site explains:

“These are hard essays to write, because they ask each writer to dig deep to identify the most closely held beliefs that form the foundation of his or her life.  It is notably not about what you think, it’s not an op-ed. It’s not about what you’re against, but what you affirm and how it intimately plays out in your life.

In the years we’ve been putting together people with diametrically opposite political ideologies, it’s been our experience that conversations deeper than the usual sound bytes yield surprising areas of agreement or at the very least an improbable new empathy for one’s political opponents.” 

“We think these essays help us understand our neighbor who might not agree with us politically, and maybe even love them just a little bit,” said Liz Joyner, Village Square executive director.

by Michele McLellan